A TYPICAL SINGLE-FAMILY home in the US takes an average of six and a half months to build, according to the Census Bureau’s latest survey. Now an Austin-based startup called Icon can erect a house nearly 200 times faster—in a day.
To be fair, the company is building houses that max out at 800 square feet, but that’s not the limit. The hyperspeed fabrication is the work of a megasize 3-D printer—picture a MakerBot on steroids—named the 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, plasticizers, and other aggregates—gets poured into a hopper at the top of the printer and flows onto the rising walls below.