Announcement

3D printing is commonplace, but have you ever seen a house printed with 3D printing? The journalist saw a set of 3 d printing villa, a five floors of the building has entered the late stage decorating at the factory located in Dongfang Avenue, Yingchuang New material (Suzhou) Co.Ltd. The 1,100-square-meter 3D printed villa, which took about a week to print and assemble, completed the 3D printing of the building in one day. The overall cost is just over 1 million, saving at least more than half construction cost.

How fast is 3D printing house? A villa can be printed out one day

There are several house built in Yingchuang new materials (Suzhou) Co.,Ltd, such as villa, 5-story building as well as small kiosks. There are introduction brand in frond of this buildings. These houses are the same as ordinary homes from the outside.

The wall of the adobe house looks like it was built out of cement layer by layer, and each layer of cement is about two centimeters thick. Although the hand feeling is rough, but each layer is airtight, it looks like a whole. There are no cracks in the corners of the wall.

It is obvious assemble between the floors and walls. “This 3D printing building are assemble on site.” Staff in the factory said a villa like this can be printed in one day, and only two or three workers will be assembled for seven days, while traditional method takes 1-3 months. 

He said there is no technical problems in Yingchuang. That is to say,  an entire building can be printed only bringing the printer to the construction site, even a 200-meter tall building. Now, the company is constantly updating its technology, and it is estimated that it will be able to print the whole building on site three years from now.

“Yingchuang has developed 3D printing for more than 12 years. The work principal of 3D printer is same with small printer.” The technician says the process of 3D printing architecture is continuous. The nozzles pour the "ink" binder into the area where the data corresponds to the "ink" where the material is solidified within 24 hours. The whole print starts at the bottom, layer by layer. In order to make the weight of the parts relatively light, the house adopts the hollow wall. The computer-generated 3D model provides a template for this. Operators can reserve parts such as doors and Windows, and water and electricity can be freely arranged in hollow walls.

What are the advantages of a 3D printed house? Construction costs can be saved by more than half

Yingchuang manager told reporters that the biggest benefit of 3D printing architecture is energy saving and environmental protection. Because 3D printing architecture does not produce any dust, no construction waste. Good news for city dwellers who suffer from smog.

"The printing of the building's 'ink' materials is mainly construction waste, industrial waste and mine tailings, and the other materials are mainly cement and steel, as well as special auxiliaries.” Zheng Jian said. Their aim is to make the urban demolition construction, mine tailings, waste material science classification processing, recycling in the wall, thermal insulation, filling, respectively from different aspects, such as roads, green circulating economy. Sand in the desert is a good material for them, which can be used in the place of sand walls, vertical green walls, etc. He said that the use of 3D printing technology to complete the wall, insulation, building components, exterior wall decoration, interior wall painting can save about 30% to 60% of the material, reduce the working period by about 50% to 70%, and save about 50-80% of the labor. In other words, with 3D printing technology, it can be cheaper and faster to build a house, and the cost of building can be saved at least 50%.

The 11,100 square meters of 3D printed villa model house displayed on site printed by Yingchuang Technology. the cost of printing is more than 1 million yuan for such villa. In addition, the site also showed an Egyptian government-ordered single-story model house, which will soon be shipped to Egypt. “A house can be printed out a day, and the total order is 20,000.” Zheng Jiang said that they will set up factories in Egypt to print the 20,000 homes. They hope to build 100 3D printing plants around the world.

Are 3D printed houses reliable? There is no industry standard in China at present

After all, the house isn't a toy. It prints one floor a day. Is it safe to live? “You can rest assured that we use five times more raw materials than regular cement.” Zheng Jian said. Using 3D printing technology, the house retains the original steel beam column structure system and reserved all pipeline and window and other space, supporting exterior wall decoration and insulation. The future development direction of digital 3D printing architecture is that the building has no steel, and the fiber technology and the waxing method are used to replace the reinforced concrete, and it is five times higher than the strength of the reinforced concrete. 

Thought it is a printed house, it should build base in advance. Zheng Jian said the base has gone to 100m deep for this 5-story building. It's no problem to build the building to 33 meters in the future. He said that they has signed agreement with China Building and Tongji University and got their support. They also hope that the relevant departments can set the national standard for 3D printing construction at an early date. 

Using 3D printing technology will be a disruptive revolution for real estate, Zheng said. In the future, customers will not only be able to customize the home, but also can customize the personalized house, print all kinds of alien components, and make a design drawing of a suite. Building in the community, on the basis of maintaining style coordination, do not have to be the same. At present, Yingchuang has contracted with a high-end property in Wujiang, printing villa model house.

Industry experts say whether 3D printing houses can meet the technical specifications of traditional building methods, which require verification. In addition, the 3D printing materials also need to be verified repeatedly, including the robustness of the material, the compressive resistance and the earthquake resistance.

From City Commercial Newspaper 2015-01-20 09:12