Can You Print Your Own House On A 3D Printer?

What can you print with 3D printing? Read what the technology can do and how 3D printing is likely to be part of your everyday life in the future.

3D printing sounds like something from the future, but the patent is dating back to 1986 and the American Chuck Hull.

At that time, it was costly and very cumbersome to build home-made prototypes for product development, so Hull invented instead the machine that could handle the work much faster and cheaper.

Ever since the 3D printer has been widely used for the production of very fast prototypes and conceptual models for architects. As technology has continually refined, 3d printing has been increasingly used for real production purposes as well.

The production manager in Damvig Develop A/S, Jesper Damvig, believes that 3D printing of mass-produced goods will probably never pay off. However, a niche market has emerged for products that are produced in limited numbers. A good example is spectacle frames.

-Spectacle frames are an item that the optician orders from the spectacle manufacturer and sells from his shop. Traditionally, the optician has ordered 1,000 copies home of 5 different spectacle designs in 10 different colors. It provides a large inventory, which the optician is not sure to get sold.

-With 3D printing technology, the optician can have one copy in the store of 20 different spectacle designs in 20 different colors. And then it is only when the customer places an order that the optician orders the spectacle frame home to the store, which then becomes 3D printed and can be retrieved a few days after. The spectacle frame can also be customized because you can 3D scan the customer's main shape and print a unique spectacle after that, Jesper Damvig explains.

The same niche production of custom 3D goods is there in the jewelry industry, in the health sector for the production of prostheses and in the manufacture of hearing aids.

While there is, therefore, an industrial market for 3D-printed specialty products, the private 3D printing market is still on a minimal hobby level. At some point, there was something else that suggested that we should all have a 3D printer standing on the desktop. But the air was slowly leaking out of the hype balloon, and today many have difficulty seeing the need for a 3D printer in the home.

David Bue Pedersen researches in 3D print and is affiliated with DTU. Within the next 10-15 years, he cannot see that the 3D printer will play a crucial role in the home.

-The industrial machines used to produce something of real value cost up to DKK 20 million, he says and continues.

-The small machines you can buy in an electronics chain for 5,000 KR. Can only be very limited and silly, such as printing handles to the tool shed or having gnomes for the driveway. So I am probably him the boring who says that 3d print does not have a pink future in the consumer market.

At the Danish Technological Institute, Lars Nyholm Thrane is researching 3D printing in the construction industry. Especially concrete construction, which because of its liquid texture that cures up and becomes fixed, is suitable for 3D use. It is possible to print a house already now, but you should not expect architectural wonders.

For large scale construction, 3D printing is still a rather immature technology. There are many fun and interesting examples of what you have experimented with around the world.

For example, ten houses have been built in China using 3D technology. However, the houses look dead straight, as it has primarily been about demonstrating that you can.