“Here’s how it works: Building designs are created in a computer just like in a computer-aided design, or CAD, program and then transmitted to a large, specially made industrial printer, like the one above. The devices vary greatly in size and capabilities, depending on who is making them—but all of them are big.
The apparatuses usually have one or more robotic arms tipped with a nozzle that spews out construction materials as the arms make their computer-programmed rotations around the base of the building. (Think of cake icing being squeezed through a piping bag.)
Those liquidlike materials, similar to molten lava, are layered on top of one another to form the walls of the structure. These materials can vary from fiber-reinforced concrete, which doesn’t require steel rebars for support, to steel and even wood, which would require reinforcements.
And eventually, experts predict the technology will print modern-day necessities such as electricity and plumbing at the same time as the home is being constructed.”
