Companies turn to 3D printing technology to build homes

It took five days to make it.

Now, experts believe that 3D printing technology can help solve India’s housing shortage by delivering complete homes in a fraction of the time and money spent in traditional construction.

“We are trying to build a 500 sq ft house within a week,” said Vidyashankar C, co-founder and chief operating officer (COO) of Tavasta Construction. 30 million from Habitat for Humanity, a global organization working to solve the housing problem.

He did not say how much the Chennai house is worth.

The problem with scaling up – and India’s housing shortage is huge – are only a handful of companies building 3D-printed homes.

But Vidyashankar believes that many 3D printed structures will emerge in the southern parts of the country. His startup is focusing only on building large building clusters, and is currently building a 5,000 to 6,000 sq ft structure in Puducherry for commercial use.

The use of 3D printers is getting old in India. It is no longer limited to manufacturing components only for the automotive and aviation sectors. During the peak months of the pandemic, they were used to make valves for ventilators and face shields.

Also known as additive manufacturing, 3D printing is a process where three-dimensional objects are created from digital representations by applying the printing material layer by layer. Typically, the material used in 3D printing is made of plastic or metal. A special type of concrete is used for housing projects.

Among traditional construction companies, Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has made some inroads with some 3D printed homes. It displayed a prototype of a two-story house using a large-format 3D printer supplied by Danish firm Kobod at its Kancheepuram facility near Chennai earlier this year.

A 2020 report by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) states that the housing shortage in urban India increased by 54% to 29 million in 2018, from 18.78 million in 2012.

The World Economic Forum estimates that worldwide, three billion people will need better housing by 2030, requiring 96,000 new homes to be built every day.

Swapnil Sansar, founder of Mumbai-based 3D printing company Divide by Zero Technologies, said the technology could also be useful for building small buildings or facilities in rough terrain with minimal labor.

Sansare, who has been in talks with manufacturing companies that wanted prototypes of 3D printers, said such companies can build houses much faster than traditional methods using additive manufacturing.

Vidyashankar said, “Traditional construction faces a lot of challenges. The construction practices are old. 3D printing can make a big difference in terms of customization and efficiency. It can open up new designs and bring about a paradigm shift from the point of view of user experience.”

Vidyashankar also pointed out that the cost of financing alone makes it attractive to 3D-print houses. It is likely to be more economical than traditional methods due to the size and unique design that 3D printing allows.

“3D printed houses will be up to 30 per cent cheaper than conventionally built houses,” he said.

One factor that has helped Twista reduce costs is complete control over the value chain. The startup has a manufacturing facility in Bengaluru and manufactures everything in-house including raw materials, printers, software and processes.

That said, the technology has some limitations, and building large homes or multi-storey apartments for commercial use can be a challenge.

“Constructing a multi-storey building using 3D printing alone is not going to happen anytime soon. Some companies outside India that claim to build multi-storey buildings have built hybrids. They build a scaffold and put a 3D-printed house on top of it. That scaffold is developed using traditional processes,” Sansare explained.

But that doesn’t mean tiny homes made with 3D printers lack durability or are unsafe. According to Sansare, these one-storey houses are durable and safe to live in. To ensure that its 3D-printed homes are as structurally strong as a traditional home, Vidyashankar said that his company has followed all the protocols that exist for traditional homes.

“The Civil Engineering Department of IIT-Madras has been very helpful in this regard. We are also working with the Government of India’s Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Structural Engineering Research Center to secure all necessary approvals and certifications.”

For now, Tvasta will focus on building structures in Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. However, it plans to build structures in Coorg and Kashmir next year to show how well the technology works in the toughest of terrains. Vidyashankar expects his company to complete construction of 25,000-30,000 sq ft next year and 150,000-200,000 sq ft next year.