The concept of 3D printed houses is spreading all over the world like wild fire from China to Minnesota everybody wants to build a 3D printed house. The Chinese are battling with time in order to make a 3D printed house in mere 24 hours on the other hand Andrey Rudenko is trying to build a two storey home in Minnesota.
Rudenko who is a contractor by profession, does have some background knowledge of architecture and engineering is currently experimenting with his project of making a two storey castle in his backyard. He spent ample of his time in building a 3D concrete printer which prints out a mixture of cement and sand in layer resolution of 20mm by 5mm. he did this with the help of technology and software from the open source RepRap 3D printing project.
Rudenko explains to 3dprintdotcom, “My concrete printing experience dates back to about 20 years ago, but at that point, advanced computers and software were not available for the type of technology I was looking to build. Thus, it wasn’t until a couple years ago that I came across the RepRap project and started working on this machine again. It took about a year to build as well as develop the special concrete mixes. He further added, “A cheap house built in 24 hours is not my goal. As an experienced builder, I know that to avoid problems in the future, it is more important to produce homes of a good quality, which may take longer to build than cheaper homes made quickly. It would be more beneficial to print a complete home, including the foundation for the staircase, fireplace, certain furniture (kitchen, island etc), columns, interior walls, and any wiring or plumbing that would fit inside the printed walls.”
Rudenko has printed the walls of the castle after a lot of tweaking to his concrete mix just to achieve the right viscosity so that the walls impart a decorative touch to the house unlike the Chinese houses which had a lot of rough edges and requires dry walls to be added to the walls in order to make it habitable. He printed his castle in his garden so that the cement can set quickly in the warm temperatures of 35°C. The structure is quite huge as a person can easily walk through it and can get a feel of the 3D printed house.
As Rudenko says, he did not start this project to attract some attention from the media but to being about a revolution in the field of construction. He wanted to work for the construction workers who are exposed to a dangerous work place hazards like dust and which is actually unavoidable but with the help of this printer the problem can be resolved to some degree.
He says, “For the sake of allowing people in construction to keep their jobs, yes, I wanted part of the work to be manual for the time-being. This also helps to not overburden the printer at the expense of efficiency. During the process of printing, I’m leaving channels to fish electrical wires and plumbing pipes through, and special channels for heating and air conditioning. Insulation is a major point of this project, and I will explain it in more detail on my website.”
If this printer proves to work as per the claims then this would bring about a revolution in the field of construction.
Image Credit: Andrey Rudenko
