ICON’s Vulcan printer is currently completing the world’s largest 3D printed neighborhood, completing 100 homes in Georgetown, Texas.

The printer, which is over 14 meters wide and weighs 4.75 tons, is completing the final houses, building them layer by layer, like a desktop 3D printer but on a much larger scale.

According to Conner Jenkins, senior project manager at ICON, 3D printing brings a significant increase in efficiency to the commercial market by replacing the need for multiple teams to build a wall system with just one team and one robot. Reuters reported.

Once concrete powder, water, sand and other additives are mixed and pumped into the printer, a nozzle extrudes the mixture like toothpaste onto a brush, layer by layer, along a pre-programmed path to create corduroy-textured walls.

Jenkins also noted that the single-story, three- to four-bedroom homes take about three weeks to print, with the foundation and metal roofs installed in a traditional manner. He added that the concrete walls are designed to resist water, mold, termites and extreme weather conditions.

“Feels like a fortress”

Lawrence Nourzad, a 32-year-old business development director, and his girlfriend Angela Hontas, a 29-year-old creative strategist, bought a home in Wolf Ranch earlier this summer. They said the house feels like a fortress and believe it will withstand most tornadoes.

The walls also provide excellent insulation against the Texas heat, keeping the interior cool even when the air conditioning isn’t running at full blast. However, they found that the 3D-printed walls also seemed to affect their wireless internet connection.

“These are, of course, really strong, thick walls. And that’s very valuable to us as homeowners and makes sure that the thing is really well insulated in a Texas summer, but the signal doesn’t travel very well through those walls,” Nourzad told Reuters.

ICON added that to solve this problem, most homeowners at Wolf Ranch use mesh internet routers, which broadcast a signal from multiple units distributed throughout the home, rather than relying on a traditional router that broadcasts a signal from a single device.

Wolf Ranch homes range in price from $450,000 to $600,000

The Wolf Ranch community’s 3D-printed homes, known as the “Genesis Collection,” cost between $450,000 and $600,000, and developers report that just over a quarter of the 100 homes have been sold.

ICON, which 3D printed its first home in Austin in 2018, wants to eventually take its technology to the moon. As part of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program, the agency has commissioned ICON to develop a construction system for building landing pads, shelters and other structures on the lunar surface.

Moreover, ICON is not the only construction startup involved in such projects. Houston-based startup Hive3D is developing a project in Round Top, Texas, where the company has built five 400- to 900-square-foot “casitas” for short-term rentals in the popular tourist destination known for its festivals and antique fairs.