Degussa AG Will Work on USC "House-Printing'' Project; System Will Build 2,000-Square-Foot House in 24 Hours, Says Inventor Business Wire
Degussa AG, one of the world's largest manufacturers and suppliers of construction materials, has announced its intention to collaborate in the development of a University of Southern California computer-controlled system designed to automatically 'print out' full-size houses in hours.
Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Information Sciences Institute has been developing his automated house-building process, called 'Contour Crafting,' for more than a year.
Khoshnevis believes his system will be able to construct a full-size, 2000-square-foot (185-square-meter) house with utilities embedded in 24 hours. He now has a working machine that can build full-scale walls, and is hoping to actually construct his first house by the end of 2005.
Contour Crafting uses crane- or gantry-mounted nozzles, from which building material -- concrete, in the prototype now operating in his laboratory -- comes out at a constant rate. Moveable trowels surrounding the nozzle mold it into the desired shape, as the nozzle moves over the work.