A company builds hotel rooms with a giant 3D printer | Story

The 3D printer is the size of a school bus with a robotic arm

⭐️HERE IS WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW⭐️

• A hotel company in Texas is building hotel units using a 3D printer.
• Builders say the technology allows for much more creativity than traditional construction.
• But as technology expands, experts say it could take jobs away from people.
• Read on to see what it looks like. ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

They say everything is bigger in Texas.

And when it comes to 3D printers, they’re right.

A hotel chain called El Cosmico on the outskirts of Marfa, Texas, is expanding by producing buildings using a giant 3D printer.

“It’s the world’s first 3D printed hotel,” said Liz Lambert, owner of El Cosmico.

She is one of the partners behind the project, which also includes a 3D printing company called ICON and an architectural firm called Bjarke Ingels Group.

A time-lapse video shows the printer at work in the Texas desert. (Video credit: Reuters)

Printing of hotels and houses

ICON’s giant printer is called Vulcan.

It is 14.2 meters wide, 4.7 meters high and weighs 4,750 kilograms.

That’s about as long and high as a school bus with the weight of a large elephant.

The printer’s “ink” is a cement-like substance called lavacrete.

During printing, workers make adjustments to the ingredients depending on weather conditions.

Vulcan’s robotic arm squirts concrete springs as it shapes the walls of a building. (Image credit: Reuters)

Lambert says printing buildings allows for much more creativity and unique design features than traditional construction methods.

“I’ve never been able to build with so few restrictions and so fluidly… just the curves, the domes and the parabolas. It’s a crazy way to build,” Lambert said in an interview with Reuters.

According to Lambert, they can incorporate architectural features that would normally be too expensive to implement on a large scale.

A rendering of the 3D printed hotel room at the El Cosmico Hotel. (Image credit: ICON/Reuters)

The company plans to build 43 hotel units and 18 residential buildings with a completion date of 2026.

They say the hotel rooms will cost between $270 and $600 CAD per night.

Threats to jobs

Similar to concerns about artificial intelligence (AI), some say the use of 3D printers to produce buildings could put many people out of work in the future.

In fact, the typical workforce of this 3D printing team is only three people.

This is much less than you would see on a normal construction site for a similar project.

Milad Bazli, a lecturer in science and technology at Charles Darwin University in Australia, told Reuters that this was an important ethical consideration going forward.

“I think from a social perspective and the impact on the economy in terms of local jobs, particularly in remote areas, this will be one of the challenges that we need to take into account as we move to the 3D printing method,” said Bazli.

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With files from Reuters