Today’s technology continues to amaze and impress. A company called Icon has announced that it is using a 3D printer to make a structurally sound, inexpensive home. This invention could change the lives for the better for its beneficiaries, and that is the company’s mission. With a collaborative effort, Icon has developed the Vulcan, a 3D printer that creates concrete inexpensively.
Icon’s mission statement on their webpage states that they are a construction technologies company leading the way into the future of homebuilding by using 3D printing to make major advancements in affordability, building performance, sustainability and customizability. Icon does this through advanced robotics and cutting-edge materials. They further state on their website that “we are able to provide sustainable solutions to a number of our world’s most pressing issues, including the pandemic of homelessness in the developing world, the difficulty of constructing off-planet space habitats, and the exorbitant cost of customized housing.”
The Vulcan can actually print the layout of a new home in about 24 hours. The home it produces is up-to-code and around 350 square feet. The rest of the home’s components like the roof, windows, doors, painting, and electric are added to the frame. The whole process takes about two days to complete one home.
The goal is to be able to up-size and create homes that are between 600-800 square feet for the cost between $4000-$5000 each.
Jason Ballard, the co-founder and president of Austin’s green home improvement store stated, “With 3D printing, you not only have a continuous thermal envelope, high thermal mass, and near zero-waste, but you also have speed, a much broader design palette, next-level resiliency, and the possibility of a quantum leap in affordability. This isn’t 10% better — it’s 10 times better.”
While the company’s main goal is to help solve the global housing crisis, they also plan to use local labor, creating jobs in the process. This technology could truly be a milestone for building homes that are affordable.