3D-Printed Homes You Can Actually Live In

A small community of 3D printed concrete houses is coming to the city of Eindhoven in Netherland. Project Milestone is about five houses built sustainability using 3D printing. The builder claim that they are the first 3D printed houses that one can actually live in. They look like five stones that have landed in future. Though 3D printing is effective with objects produced in large quantities, this housing society shows that custom manufacturing has arrived.

What is the fascinating project?

The Dutch city of Eindhoven is set to be the first in the world to have habitable homes made by a 3D printer, in an innovation its backers believe will revolutionize the construction industry. Of the first five new houses to be put on the rental market next year, the smallest, with two bedrooms, has already attracted applications from 20 interested families just a week after images were made available.

This isn’t just a technology demonstrator. The initiative attempts to solve a real-world problem. Known as Project Milestone, the development is said by the Dutch construction company Van Wijnen to offer a solution to a shortage of skilled bricklayers in the Netherlands. The method will also cut costs and environmental damage by reducing the amount of cement that is used, said Rudy van Gurp, a manager at the firm, which is working in collaboration on the project with the Eindhoven University of Technology.

The 3D printer being used is essentially a huge robotic arm with a nozzle that squirts out specially formulated cement, said to have the texture of whipped cream. The cement is “printed” according to an architect’s design, adding layer upon layer to create a wall, and increase its strength. “We have no need for the moulds used to create houses made with cement today, and so we will never use more cement than is necessary,” Van Gurp said.

Only the exterior and inner walls of the first of the new homes will be made using the printer, which will be located off-site. By the time the fifth of the homes is built – comprising three floors and three bedrooms – it is hoped that the drainage pipes and other necessary installations will also be made using the printer, which will be located on the site of the new houses, which will again reduce costs.

The use of 3D printing additionally opens the possibility of placing wireless sensors directly into the properties’ walls to allow a home to be fully “smart”, incorporating all the lighting, heating and security controls required.

Why is this the future of housing?

Designers have described the style of the first set of homes being built by Van Wijnen as “erratic blocks in the green landscape”.

They are said to illustrate the fact that 3D printing allows the construction of buildings of “almost any shape... whereas traditional concrete is very rigid in shape”. Van Gurp said, however, that the beauty of 3D printing was that people would in time be able to construct homes to suit their own tastes.

“We like the look of the houses at the moment as this is an innovation and it is a very futuristic design,” said Van Gurp. _“But we are already looking to a take a step further and people will be able to design their own homes and then print them out. People will be able to make their homes suit them, personalize them, and make them more aesthetically pleasing.” _

Van Gurp said he believed that the use of 3D printers in the construction of homes would be “mainstream” within five years. He said: “I think by then about 5% of homes will be made using a 3D printer. In the Netherlands, we have a shortage of bricklayers and people who work outside and so it offers a solution to that. It will eventually be cheaper than the traditional methods. Bricklaying is becoming more and more expensive. Alongside, bricks and the use of timber, this will be a third way, which will look like plastered houses, which people like.”

The five homes – being constructed consecutively in a wood in the district of Meerhoven close to Eindhoven’s airport – will be completed by the middle of 2019. The real estate company Vesteda will rent them out. “We have to get the permits and the houses will be built in line with all Dutch housing regulations,” said Van Gurp. “We can make all the calculations but we actually have to do tests which involve making the walls in real life.”

Asked whether he would live in one of the homes, Van Gurp said: “For the first house we already have 20 candidates, and that is after only a week of having the images on our website. I have three children, and so the first one would be too small for us. But I would live in the biggest house, yes.”

All the houses will have foundations built using the conventional methods. “We only use 3D printing where there is value to it,”Van Gurp said. The Eindhoven University of Technology has been a pioneer in 3D printing using concrete. Last year the southeastern town of Gemert opened the world’s first 3D-printed cycle bridge, which had been made at the university.

How does 3D printing work?

3D printers are a new generation of machines that can make everyday things. They are remarkable because they can produce different kinds of objects, in different materials, all from the same machine. This we know. This everybody knows.

How do they work, not many really know?

If you look closely (with a microscope) at a page of text from your home printer, you’ll see the letters don’t just stain the paper, they’re actually sitting slightly on top of the surface of the page. In theory, if you printed over that same page a few thousand times, eventually the ink would build up enough layers on top of each other to create a solid 3D model of each letter. That idea of building a physical form out of tiny layers is how the first 3D printers worked.

You start by designing a 3D object on an ordinary home PC, connect it to a 3D printer, press ‘print’ and then sit back and watch. The process is a bit like making a loaf of sliced bread but in reverse. Imagine baking each individual slice of bread and then gluing them together into a whole loaf (as opposed to making a whole loaf and then slicing it, like a baker does). That’s basically what a 3D printer does.

The 3D printing process turns a whole object into thousands of tiny little slices and then makes it from the bottom-up, slice by slice. Those tiny layers stick together to form a solid object. Each layer can be very complex, meaning 3D printers can create moving parts like hinges and wheels as part of the same object. You could print a whole bike - handlebars, saddle, frame, wheels, brakes, pedals, and chain - ready assembled, without using any tools. It’s just a question of leaving gaps in the right places.

Although buying a 3D printer is much cheaper than setting up a factory, the cost per item you produce is higher, so the economics of 3D printing don’t stack-up against traditional mass production yet. It also can’t match the smooth finish of industrial machines, nor offer the variety of materials or range of sizes available through industrial processes. But, like so many household technologies, the prices will come down and 3D printer capabilities will improve over time.

Like all new technologies, the industry hype is a few years ahead of the consumer reality. It’s an emerging technology, which means, like home computers or mobile phones, most people will remain sceptical about needing one until everyone has got one… and then we’ll all wonder how we ever managed without them.