Can someone with expertise in concrete construction clear up an issue for me?
I would think this type of construction was not safe because concrete needs some sort of reinforcement to make up for its low tensile strength. The wikipedia page on rebar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebar) seems to support my concerns, so my question is am I missing something?
Is it possible to make up for a lack of steel reinforcement using special concrete mixtures, or is it perhaps unnecessary for small scale construction?
With the use of a few patterns and the use of specialized components, only the structure of a building need be printed out. Wiring, upstream plumbing, and ventilation can be handled using centralized units and robots that can crawl passageways while stringing tubing or cabling. Already centralized units are used with single family homes and the upstream plumbing. All hot and cold water is distributed by directly from a central unit connected to all of the taps by a single branchless synthetic hose.
The hard part about construction is that there are around 300 semi-tiny tasks involved in building a house. You either need a very general purpose robot or many specialized bots. The former doesn't exist and the latter is too expensive. Humans are just too good.
This technology makes sense, but doesn't do everything. You still need plumbing, wiring, fixtures, flooring, etc.
This probably solves 100 of the 300 tasks. It's a really interesting problem though.
I wonder if machines like this will bring more exotic (and traditionally more expensive) home designs to more people. I could really enjoy designing my own home and then watching it being printed out.
The Monolithic Dome folks will manufacture a custom-designed 'airform' which can then be sprayed with urethane insulation, hung with rebar, and then sprayed with gunnite concrete.
American houses are crappy already. As a eruopean, where houses are actually build with real brick and mortar, I find american houses extremely flimsy, yet pretty expensive.
I hope it wont be used to build even more cookie cutter homes, that make communist style pre-fabs look good.
I hope somehow they solve the problem in current development where every house looks the same. Maybe it will be cheap enough to have real variety on house design, aided by computer simulations.
I would think this type of construction was not safe because concrete needs some sort of reinforcement to make up for its low tensile strength. The wikipedia page on rebar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebar) seems to support my concerns, so my question is am I missing something?
Is it possible to make up for a lack of steel reinforcement using special concrete mixtures, or is it perhaps unnecessary for small scale construction?