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Larry Haines, founder of Austin-based Sunconomy, said his company has partnered with San Francisco residential building company, Forge New, to develop a system called We Print Houses. It will allow them to create bigger homes. They use a unique mobile platform to which they attach a print head.
[...] They also use a specific building method, placing geo-polymer concrete on the inside and outside of a steel beam with insulation in the middle.
"That's how we're meeting code is by being able to insulate and get the structural strength and integrity from slab to wall from wall-to-the-roof system all in one," said Haines.
Ultimately, Haines wants to print a whole house, including the roofs and floors, and sell it, something he says has never been done in the country. He's already obtained the permit to build the first model home in Lago Vista, about 30 miles outside of Austin. Construction would take two months, and safety inspections would be performed similarly to those done with a traditionally built house.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday February 04 2019, @04:39PM
>"I just want to rent it for a week" does not seem to be in the business model
Have you ever gone to John Deere and tried to rent a tractor? Or a backhoe from Bobcat? You can't, it's not in their business model - they build and sell hardware, they don't want to deal with the many headaches of rental. But obviously it *is* still a viable business model because plenty of companies do buy the hardware from them and then rent it out.
Meanwhile, if you're a company that bought the hardware, and are keeping it busy selling the full service experience (aka house building), then you don't really have any incentive to sell more limited services. And you certainly have no interest in renting out your expensive bread-and-butter hardware for someone else to destroy.
About the only time you see non-predatory equipment rental is when you have relatively expensive and easy-to-operate equipment that has broad demand for short periods of use. Ditch-witches, roto-rooters, trailers, small backhoes - LOTS of people have a use for one of those for a day or three every few years, and there's a thriving rental market. 3D-printing a house though? I'd bet that both the house design and the printer operation still have lots of subtle gotchas that mean there's no way you want some amateur calling the shots. Heck, some not-so-subtle ones too - the stories of people ruining equipment by not washing the concrete out before it sets are legion.