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by vlozko 1071 days ago
> The printer would dig foundations

You lost me there. I’m guessing you’ve never had to deal with rocky New England soil and non-flat grades. I’m sure many other regions have their own challenges, such as water tables and custom insulation requirements.
1 comments
londons_explore 1071 days ago
> rocky New England soil

Even a tiny creature like an ant can dig holes in tough soil. A machine can too as long as it has feedback (ie. it can see the rocks and keep digging around and bashing till it comes lose.)

> non-flat grades

Well you dig it till it is the same shape as the plan...

> water tables

Either lay the concrete underwater (most concrete can be laid underwater) or dewater with a pump on the end of the actuator arm.

All of these problems just lead to increased build time. Obviously your machine is quite expensive - so if it takes 2 extra days of machine time to build a house on a steep grade in rocks, then thats gonna cost more, and at some point might make it not worth it.

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vlozko 1071 days ago
By rocky, I’m not talking about pebbles and small stones. I’m referring to boulders and ledge that may need blasting. It happens quite often up here and most of the time excavators may not know about these issues until they start digging.

> Well you dig it till it is the same shape as the plan...

That’s not how it works. Either the surrounding property needs to be regraded, in which case you’d still be forced to use excavation equipment, or you’re making an even more complex machine to be able to support building things like walk out basements on a custom grade. In the case of basements there’s simply a lot of volume of material that would need to be either removed out of a lot or just moved within the lot. Again, still needs excavation equipment to do that. The same excavation equipment that can dig out a foundation within hours and is perfectly adept at dealing with boulders.

A machine to handle other parts of the job such as foundation pouring might be viable. I’m just saying that a magical machine that can do it all if left alone for a few days is wishful thinking.

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