A typical family home in the US takes an average of six and a half months to build. An Austin-based startup called Icon can produce a house nearly 200 times faster. In a day.
To be fair, the company is building houses that max out at 800 square feet. The fabrication is the work of a huge 3-D printer called Vulcan. Engineers run digital blueprints for the home through so-called slicer software, which translates the design into the programming language G-code. That code determines where the printer moves along its track, extruding 3⁄4-inch-thick layers of concrete like icing on a cake. The base material — a finely calibrated mix of cement, sand, plasticisers, and other aggregates — gets poured into a hopper at the top of the printer and flows onto the rising walls below.
The resulting abodes, which will cost $4,000 to build, are the latest addition in the tiny-house movement. In 2019, Icon intends to ship the Vulcan to El Salvador, where it’s slated to print 100 homes for disadvantaged families.
The startup’s next excursion may be even farther afield: Icon is participating in a NASA competition to develop printable space habitats using “indigenous materials,” the planetary soil available onsite.
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