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Day: December 27, 2020

Prototyping the slow house

I have been giving it a thought to buy a 3d printer for my small office. The ideal situation would be to have the printer produce small components that we can use to build model houses based on a designed brick. Our work with  Fundacion Esperanza has relied on their 30-year system using a non-mortar self-locking block to build Tijuana houses.

The organization uses these types of blocks because the houses are built with volunteer non-skilled hands. This technique allows building a house with the local community’s combined participation and volunteers from across the United States and other parts of the world.

The blocks are produced in a block-machine operated by the families and supervised by the foundation’s technical staff. Later the blocks are transported to the construction site where the volunteers snap them together, and walls are completed when every other open cell is poured with concrete.

The 3d printed pieces can also be a didactical device to show the families and volunteers the building process. I am interested in two low-priced machines, one a filament printer ([Open Filament] da Vinci Jr Pro Wireless 3D) and the other that uses resin (EPAX E6 6″ Mono LCD Resin 3D Printer). We need to upgrade the construction process with new technology and materials that allow for a better structural and envrinmetal strategy.