<story><title>Man builds 3D printed concrete castle in his own backyard</title><url>http://www.3ders.org/articles/20140826-minnesotan-world-first-3d-printed-concrete-castle-in-his-own-backyard.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>yummybear</author><text>While 3D printers and great and there&amp;#x27;s fantastic possibilities for their use ahead, I have a hard time seeing the printing of entire houses as one.&lt;p&gt;We already have great modular, mass-producable and cheap elements for assembling houses: Bricks and concrete slabs.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s possible to assemble the basic structure of a house in days with prefabricated elements.&lt;p&gt;Where I do see a need for 3D printers are in products that aren&amp;#x27;t mass producable, items that need special fitting, items with a unique design.</text></comment>
<story><title>Man builds 3D printed concrete castle in his own backyard</title><url>http://www.3ders.org/articles/20140826-minnesotan-world-first-3d-printed-concrete-castle-in-his-own-backyard.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bruce511</author><text>The castle itself is pretty cool.&lt;p&gt;What I would be interested in are the numbers in terms of cost saving (when implemented at scale). The printer seems to replace some of the labour of building in say brick or wood, but of course the labor to build the walls is only one of the costs involved.&lt;p&gt;Consider the major cost areas; land, earthworks, foundations, structure materials, structure labour, windows and doors, plastering, plumbing, electrics, painting, bathrooms, kitchen, floors.&lt;p&gt;Clearly this optimizes one of the processes, and it may make construction timeless and if you like the finish you can avoid plastering etc, but given that you only save the labor, not the materials,I&amp;#x27;m not sure what the eventual monetary saving would be.&lt;p&gt;Architecturally though it can do things your regular brickie probably can&amp;#x27;t do - curves for example - so that may end up being the true value of the printer.</text></comment>