Is this the world’s first 3D printed house? - Financial Times

Is this the world’s first 3D printed house?

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/04/15/has-china-beaten-the-west-in-building-the-first-3d-printed-house/

Apr 15, 2014 1:03pmby James Kynge

China invented printing several centuries before Gutenberg’s mechanical press in Germany. Now a Chinese company in Shanghai appears to have stolen a march over Europe in the race to build the world’s first 3D printed house.

A Shanghai company, Shanghai WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co, says it made 10 3D printed houses (see photos) each costing $4,800 each in less than 24 hours, according to 3ders, a 3D printing industry website.

There is, however, some debate over whether the house built is genuinely a 3D creation because it was printed not as a single item but in parts that were then assembled. A 3D house under construction in Amsterdam by DUS Architects may therefore have a chance to claim the “world’s first” mantle – but it is not scheduled to be finished until three years’ time.

Nobody could accuse the Shanghai abode of neo-classical elegance, but from an engineering perspective it is remarkable. The building was made using an enormous 3D printer that is 32 meters long, 10 meters wide and 6.6 meters high, the 3derswebsite added.

 The ‘ink’ used for the Shanghai 3D printed houses is based on high-grade cement and glass fiber. Like traditional 3D printers, the system carefully spills out those materials layer by layer, consistently building upward. 3ders says the houses are 200 sq meters in size and are built in Shanghai’s Qingpu district.

“We purchased parts for the printer overseas, and assembled the machine in a factory in Suzhou,” 3ders quoted Ma Yihe, CEO of the company, as saying. “Such a new type of 3D-printed structure is environment-friendly and cost-effective.”

 The world’s first movable type printing technology is credited to Bi Sheng, a Chinese printer between the years 1041 and 1048. While in the West, the invention of movable type mechanical printing is credited to the German, Johannes Gutenberg in 1450.