Building 2500sqft houses in 24 hours with "Contour Crafting"
The future of construction is underway at the University of Southern California, by a team being lead by Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of industrial and systems engineering. With federal funding behind him, we may soon seeing 2500sqft house being completed in as little as 24 hours.
A new powerful extruder and 3d printing technology is what makes this seemingly impossible task attainable. Prof. Khoshnevis also created a printhead that can extrude wet cement with the additon of a trowel fixed to the head and a special hardener, the cement is able to keep its form as each layer is applied one right after the other.
Contour crafting could be implemented to give relief to those who have lost there home dude to natural disasters. At a much lower cost and higher speed Prof. Khoshnevis sees the use being the perfect answer for low income housing. As well as some more lofty goals...
"Contour Crafting technology has the potential to build safe, reliable, and affordable lunar and Martian structures, habitats, laboratories, and other facilities before the arrival of human beings. Contour Crafting construction systems are being developed that exploit in situ resources and can utilize lunar regolith as construction material. These structures can include integrated radiation shielding, plumbing, electrical, and sensor networks."
Though the tech is young, the team has already had success printing structures with walls up to six feet high. Contour Crafter looks to build structures and colonies on other planets as an answer to swelling planetary population problems. With current research funded by NASA and the Cal-Earth Institute, the team is investigating the application of Contour Crafting in building structures like landing pads, roads, hangers and habitats on the moon and Mars.