Chinese firm 3-D prints an earthquake-proof home

3-D printing has already had an impact on the housing industry, with prefabricated homes being created at factories and assembled on-site. But now, a Chinese startup has come up with an even more novel approach – it’s printing homes in their entirety, and it’s doing so on-site.

Recently, Chinese firm HuaShang Tengda 3-D printed an entire 4,300 square-foot home, with the whole operation taking just 45 days from start to finish. The home itself is actually more akin to a fortress, with eight-feet thick walls making the home strong enough to withstand an earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale.

According to Curbed.com, which obtained the story via the 3DPrint.com website, said, "construction workers prepared the site and installed the building's frame, plumbing, and rebar supports." Once that was done, the 3-D printer was then moved in to print the actual structure. HuaShang Tengda used a special industrial grade 3-D printer that comes with four separate systems for formulating the ingredients, mixing concrete, controlling the transmission and actually printing the building.

"A specially designed split nozzle," says Curbed, "spits out concrete simultaneously on the interior and exterior sides of the rebar support, creating a sturdy construction." The home used about 20 tons of concrete in all.

HuaShang Tengda’s earthquake-proof, 3-D printed homes come in response to the recent 2008 magnitude 7.9 earthquake in China’s Sichuan province, which claimed almost 80,000 lives.

Image via 3dprint.com