Why 3-D Printed Homes May Save Lives As Well As the Environment

 3D printing has created faster and cheaper parts for lots of industries. Home building — both here and in space — could be next.



Wood, nails, concrete, and human labor: For the most part, building a house hasn't advanced much in a hundred years. What if that could all change with the help of giant robotic printers?
That's the world Berikos Khoshnevis envisions. Khoshnevis, an engineer at the University of Southern California, is one of a handful of pioneers creating machines that can custom-print buildings.
Construction has problems built into it. Every year in the United States, 400,000 workers are seriously injured or killed doing construction work, according to OSHA.
There are also environmental problems: Construction of a typical single family home generates a waste stream of three to seven tons — including wood, drywall, and roofing materials that are sent to the dump. Around the globe, more than 40 percent of all raw materials are consumed in the construction process. In addition to wasting valuable resources, construction contributes significantly to environmentally harmful emissions, Khoshnevis says.
That's why he's working on a giant 3-D printer that could soon construct homes.
The prototype built by Contour Crafting, a company started by Khoshnevis, was able to build a 2,500 square foot house in just 20 hours (compared with seven months on average for a conventional home from start to finish).
Contour Crafting isn't alone: San Francisco-based Apis Cor printed a small house in just 24 hours. And a Chinese company called Winsun recently announced they used 3-D Printing to create ten homes in a single day.

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