The first 3d printed house will be built in Amsterdam. This Year!

3D printing is already advancing quicker than most anticipated and is being used every day for the electronics sector for constructing custom enclosures and soon added to that will be air ducts, conduits and motor mounts.

The new sector is now being used for military devices and for one of medical devices like prostheses.

Mick Ebeling, is the founder of an American startup called Not Impossible Labs. In November 2013, Ebeling travelled to Sudan for a month after hearing of a 14 year old bomb victim who had lost both hands. Thus was created Project Daniel. He took with him printers, spools of plastic and cables. The 3D printers that create the prosthetic’s plastic parts make the device seem hi-tech, but the resulting arm is really just a simple, mechanical device. Since Ebeling has returned home, one prosthetic a week has been printed, thanks to two 3D printers he left behind.  The printed parts are then collected by eight local people trained to operate the machines, assemble the arms, and customise them for recipients.

So how does this technology fit in with the construction industry?

Back in 2012, two technologies, Contour Crafting and 3D concrete printing, promised to build homes in less than 24 hours using a 3D printer. Both Contour Crafting and 3D concrete printing have made progress, but not enough to print a house in a day. But now it looks like that is all about to change, this year we will see the first 3D printed house, but with someone new!

DUS Architects from the Netherlands is going to take a crack at it with a publicly funded project called 3D Print Canal House.

The company will be taking advantage of the 400-year-old tradition of building canal houses to prove that 3D printed housing is not only possible, but financially feasible.

The 3D printer being used in the construction is one of the largest yet. The printer itself has a build volume of 2x2x3.5 meters. The 3D printer will be able to print 6x6x11 foot rooms that will then be assembled into a house.

DUS Architects won’t say what kind of material they’re using yet, but it’s reportedly a sustainable material built by adhesives company Henkel.

To help support the project, Amsterdam will allow the public to observe the 3D printer as it makes the house as part of what it calls the Construction Expo starting March 1. There will be an admission fee which the city will use to fund the project in the long term.

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