Biomedical engineers are using 3D printing to fabricate surgical implants from titanium. Gun rights advocates have printed a functioning firearm. NASA is funding development of autonomous 3D printers to build a base on Mars. Suddenly, 3D printing is everywhere, and the implications for architects and custom builders range from merely practical to truly revolutionary. (Photos and video by Amy Albert) Also called additive manufacturing, 3D printing works by depositing raw material in thin, precise layers. Imagine an ink-jet printer retracing the letter “I” until it becomes a miniature I-beam, except that the “ink” is plastic or metal—or Martian soil—and the output is virtually anything that can be encoded in a CAD file.
As a design tool, 3D printing has arrived. Boston-based architect Elizabeth Whittaker says 3D printers produce architectural models better and faster than manual techniques. “I have one where I teach [at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design],” she says, “and more and more people are using it to make things that are otherwise un-makeable.” Moderately priced 3D machines print relatively small objects—think bread-loaf size—“but that’s going to change,” Whittaker says. “I think everyone is going to have one in their office in 10 years, and you’ll be able to print something 8 feet tall.” With their ability to produce highly complex shapes as easily as very simple ones, 3D printers have revolutionized model-making and product prototyping, Whittaker says, and they are destined to influence the design process, too. “They make forms that you can’t make with flat materials,” she says, a capability that—like CAD and 3D computer modeling before it—will free architects to think in new ways.
Fabrication is becoming a seamless extension of design. Architect Ronald Rael is using 3D printing technology to translate CAD drawings to full-scale custom architectural components—“from walls and façades to interiors and furniture,” Rael says. His Oakland, Calif.-based firm, Rael San Fratello Architects, uses a printer with output up to 3 meters by 3 meters “by as long as you want,” he says.
The machine can use a variety of powdered base materials, and Rael and his partners adapted theirs to output in concrete polymer, wood fiber, or even salt. “Our process has zero waste, and it uses materials from an industrial waste stream,” Rael says. “We’re hoping [to produce] curtain wall applications, interior walls, freestanding spaces or rooms, and furnishings. Our motto is ‘Print Big.’ Our goal is to print architecture.”
Production builders see a printed future. Salt Lake City-based Garbett Homes uses a 3D printer to produce stunningly accurate multicolor models of its new-home communities. The cost is half that of handmade models, says acquisitions director Rene Oehlerking, “and you can get it done overnight.”
Oehlerking predicts that scaled-up versions of the same machinery will become a mainstay of the construction industry. “Why couldn’t 3D printing be a natural next step for panelization?” he asks. “You could have a 3D printer on site and print out panels with channels for the conduit, HVAC, data, and ducting. I’m absolutely confident that in my lifetime we’ll be able to print out an entire home,” he says.
An all-printed house may be closer than you think. “Construction is the last human endeavor that isn’t automated,” says Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Southern California, who is working to change that situation. Khoshnevis is the inventor of Contour Crafting, a supersized application of 3D printing aimed at producing entire concrete buildings.
“So far, my funding is from NASA,” which hopes to use the technology in building that Mars base, Khoshnevis explains. But if all goes to plan, the effort will also support development of an earthbound house printer. “I don’t have a crystal ball,” he says, “but if there is sufficient funding, in two years I will make the first machines available for commercial use.”
