Housing is one of the primary needs of living beings. With a growing population, it is necessary to be able to allow everyone to obtain housing at lower cost. That’s why the authorities are investing in new technologies looking for opportunities to build quality housing quickly while keeping costs down. Additive manufacturing is one of the solutions currently test and use.

An increase in the number of dwellings and a decrease in time

Primary housing like studio could be built between 24h and 3 days, against a minimum of 3 weeks with the quadruple of staff. This could be a way of rebuilding in times of humanitarian emergencies such as natural disasters.

Since this type of construction requires on average 4 times less staff than normal construction, 4 units can be started at the same time. It would be a way to increase the profitability of the constructions. Assuming that, with the usual strategies, ons housing would be built in 3 weeks with 8 workers, we can estimate that with the use of 3D robot, for the same time and the same number of workers we can estimate a minimum of 25 homes.

A budgetary improvement

The materials used can be varied (foam expansive, bioplastic, concrete …), it will be possible to go in search of the most advantageous materials from an economic point of view but also ecological. In addition, the ability to create at the chain will control the materials in large quantities and thus reduce costs. In addition, the robot can print on demand, losses of materials will be extremely limited. Indeed, the additive manufacturing allows to create only according to the needs, without surplus of matter.

Minimizing the number of workers needed to create a single dwelling will also significantly reduce the cost of labor, thus allowing this budget to be invested in other housing investments.

Of course, the machines have a cost, however, in view of the many economic improvements allowed by this mode of manufacture, these machines are planned to be profitable extremely important. According to France 2, investors envisage a gain of 10% to 20% on the creation of these new homes.

An optimized design to everyone’s taste

The computer aided design of these new housings makes it possible to overcome certain constraints imposed by other manufacturing methods. As said above, the robot that prints can create almost anything that is asked of it. The dwellings can therefore be optimized in terms of size, shape and layout in order to obtain a well insulated housing, without loss of space with rooms corresponding to the exact needs of the inhabitants.

In addition, this new way of manufacturing opens doors to creativity: the architects will be able to give free rein to their imagination to build housing with curves for example. The future owners will also be able to put their hands in the dough by working the design so that their housing corresponds exactly to their expectations.

Conclusion

Here is another innovation allowed by 3D printing: housing for all, quickly and cheaply. Let’s hope that this will make it possible to build a lot of social housing to welcome the poorest and to make up for natural disasters which put housing difficulties of entire populations in difficulties. If humanitarian services and governments invest in these innovative projects, the world’s population has everything to gain.

Again do not hesitate to leave me your opinion on this fascinating subject.