USC's 'print-a-house' construction technology

Interior view of wall showing extrusion mechanism. Credit: USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Caterpillar, the world's largest manufacturer of construction equipment, is starting to support research on the "Contour Crafting" automated construction system that its creator believes will one day be able to build full-scale houses in hours.

Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, says the system is a scale-up of the rapid prototyping machines now widely used in industry to "print out" three-dimensional objects designed with CAD/CAM software, usually by building up successive layers of plastic.

"Instead of plastic, Contour Crafting will use concrete," said Khoshnevis. More specifically, the material is a special concrete formulation provided by USG, the multi-national construction materials company that has been contributing to Khoshnevis' research for some years as a member of an industry coalition backing the USC Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies (CRAFT), home of the initiative.

The feasibility of the Contour Crafting process has been established by a recent research effort which has resulted in automated fabrication of six-foot concrete walls.

Caterpillar will be a major contributor to upcoming work on the project, according to Everett Brandt, an engineer in Caterpillar's Technology & Solutions Division, who will work with Khoshnevis. Another Caterpillar engineer, Brian Howson, will also participate in the effort.

Goals for this phase of the project are process and material engineering research to relate various process parameters and material characteristics to the performance of the specimens to be produced. Various experimental and analytical methods will be employed in the course of the research.

Future phases of the project are expected to include geometric design issues, research in deployable robotics and material delivery methods, automated plumbing and electrical network installation, and automated inspection and quality control.

Source: University of Southern California

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Posted by googleplex 08/28/08 18:20

Rank: 4.5/5 after 2 votes

I have been following this research for a while. Not exactly sure why it is so slow to come to market. Might be that building codes require rebar in the walls and they have not built that into their technology.

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Posted by CaptSpaulding 08/29/08 12:54

Rank: 5/5 after 1 vote

I don't know about the specifics of this technology, but I know that alot of rapid prototyping parts lack something in multiple areas including uniformity, physical properties (strength, strain tolerance, etc.), and defect mitigation. Also, the specific concrete that they are using may not hold up to building codes or could be prone to environmental cracking. Often, processes will be developed with non-ideal materials and only implemented once useful and affordable options become available.

Just some thoughts, like I said, I'm not overly familiar with the specifics of large scale RP.

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Posted by Alizee 08/29/08 22:42

Not rated yet.

This is basically "swallow nest" technology.