3D Printer in Building a Houe (Essay Sample)

3D Printer in Building a House
Student’s Name
Course
Professor
Institution
City
Date
3D Printer in Building, a House
Construction industry is one of the highly advancing industries around the globe. New technologies have constantly increased trying to reduce health and security threats that have been posed by the traditional way of constructing houses (Tyagi 2013). Building houses has been known to be contributing to massive pollution resulting from the actions during and after constructions. Engineers that carryout actual constructions are usually exposed to harmful materials and machines being used during construction (Rory 2014). A lot of money is invested in acquiring labor to perform various activities that relate to the construction of houses, as the industry is majorly labor-intensive one. With the innovation in technology, building industry has significantly made various steps to solve most of these problems that have been scaring people from this rich industry. Robots machines among many other technologies have been designed to help in reducing labor cost and reduce the level of injuries that have been witnessed (James 2014). Creativity and innovation that has been brought with the advanced technology has identified one technology that is believed to be the solution to all the problems that the construction industry has been suffering from and that is 3D printing technology. In those early days when 3D printing was introduced, so many people preempted that it would completely transform the construction industry. The futuristic new tool would help erect skyscrapers without using teams of builders, cranes, and scaffolding. There was a believe that issues related to safety and health in the construction industry would be forgotten in tech-utopia as all manner of heavy lifting was to be done by robots.
Advocates of 3D printing technology remained optimistic about the potentials of having entire building constructed by this technology (James 2014). However, in the early days, 3D printing only used to produce very small objects as hearing aids that were being done by Ron Arad. Building an entire house remained a pipe dream until 2014 when construction firm that belongs to Chinese printed ten houses in less than a day in Shanghai. It is at this point that 3D printing technology lived the dream.
History of 3D and How Its Works
3D printer has been known as a machine that allows designers to translate computer-based models of a prototype into a real physical object faster than the traditional methods. 3D printing has been used to refer to many related technologies that produce 3D physical objects. Building printing, on the other hand, has been used to refer to technologies that use 3D printing to construct buildings (Rory 2014). 3D printing technology can be comprehensively defined as a process that uses configuration solid three-dimensional objects that assume any desired shape on the designs of a digital model. Charles Hull, in the early 80s, became the first person to invent 3D printer, which only utilized stereo lithography, and there was no much development of the prototype. Lack of prototyping prompted Hull to find away of inventing technology that would boost technology commercially wise. In its conception, development of 3D faced several challenges one of which included technology imaging. Laser supported suitability of UV wavelength and it could only operate when there are cooling towers and a large supply of power (Loz 2014). Even after developing solid-state laser to solve the problem of excessive power usage and issues on water towers, there were still compatibility issues with it. Hull then decided to come up with a stereolithography, which was the first to be in a solid state (Tyagi 2013). It was very expensive, and only a few people could a ford it however, it has gone under continuous improvement and transformation to the extent that it is now affordable. Three-dimension printers vary in size depending on the size of what one wants to develop. In building a house, for example, 3D printer that is 32 metres in length, 10 metres in length, and seventy metres height are used to print house of 200 square metre homes (James 2014). There is a standard ink mixture that the 3D printer use to create building parts layer after layer during depositing, onto thin layer of powder, liquid binder. The current technology mix high-grade cement, by-products from ore extraction, and recycled mine tailings.
How Building Design Could Be Transformed By 3D Printing
Architects have been using 3D printing to reduce the time used in assembling scale models, which has been very successful of late. In the recent past, construction companies were performing an experiment with 3D printing to found out whether it was possible to build parts of the building. They had managed to print wild angles and designs by using concrete (Rory 2014). One challenge that 3D printer suffered before, is making the form that would help in pouring concrete. Architects and most project managers have been working together to print sections of building at different locations, which are then assembled at one location. There has been a modern research and development since 2004 to have a more flexible way of building private and commercial habitation. The dream has been to come up with electrical facilities, built-in plumbing in a single process by use of large 3D printers that have the capability to complete the building in a proximately 20 hours printer time. The idea of having different parts of a house printed in different locations and assembled at one point when construction of a house has not been very efficient. For that reason, finding a solution has constantly been the wish of most architects and project managers in the construction industry (Loz 2014). The effort to improve efficiency, reduce cost and do way with health and safety issues when constructing a house seem to be bearing fruit. It is becoming much clearer that 3D printing in building houses as a technology whose time has come and most European innovators have already reaping beautiful rewards. This can be comfortably illustrated by the current trend in the construction industry and the advancement in 3D printing.
By early 2013, two metres of materials used in building houses were being printed per hour by 3D printing technology (Aaron 2013). A follow on having a new generation was set to be capable of printing 3.5 metres in an hour, which is enough to complete the house in a week's time. News broke up in the early months of 2014 that one of the construction firms in Chinese managed to "print” up to ten houses in less than one day in Shanghai (Rory 2014). This is a confirmation that the big dream to have 3D printing technology as part of architecture has finally come true. 3D printer that can print solid objects from a digital model by way of having successive layers laid to have mimic onscreen forms has dated way back, but not to the scale of having 10 house as in Shanghai.
 INCLUDEPICTURE "http://img.rt.com/files/news/21/de/70/00/3d.n.jpg" \* MERGEFORMATINET 

Diagram of the Giant Printing Tech
The printer that was used in WinSun Decoration Design Engineering was so huge to the tune of 32 metres long, seven metres high, and ten metres wide. Through this, 3D printer managed to have homes 200 square metre homes in the district of Shanghai Qingpu with a secret "ink." The houses that were built became so cost effective and only went at a lower price of £3,000 (Aaron 2013). The project seem have a high chance of being successful in China first because the cost is highly viable, they have high momentum, and the economies of scale that can help that happen. Even with that achievement of WinSun's, 3D printing is a blossoming technology where the leading specialists come from European (Loz 2014).
Foster and Partners, which is the biggest consumers of 3D after Nike, in the past few years made a pronouncement, print a domed moon for European Space Agency. The popularity and usage of 3D printer have been very effective as De Kestelier who...