Did they ever get those 3D printed houses off the ground, or are they still just a concept?
edit: okay so the number worldwide is less than 200 as of a couple years ago, so it's still very rare and in the "figuring out if it's worth it" phase. 3D printers have a looooong way to go before they're able to even be considered for something this large, and then they'll still have a long way to go before they're competitive with already-existing steel manufacturing.
And what advantage would 3D printing bring to bridgemaking anyway? Steel is very recyclable, so material efficiency isn't really a large benefit. Most of the process in terms of time is moving the pieces into position and assembling them, while making steel beams and cables are both very fast and mature processes, so that's not good either.
And what the fuck is the AI going to do, generate a blueprint that's just a bunch of noise?
Did they ever get those 3D printed houses off the ground, or are they still just a concept?
edit: okay so the number worldwide is less than 200 as of a couple years ago, so it's still very rare and in the "figuring out if it's worth it" phase. 3D printers have a looooong way to go before they're able to even be considered for something this large, and then they'll still have a long way to go before they're competitive with already-existing steel manufacturing.
And what advantage would 3D printing bring to bridgemaking anyway? Steel is very recyclable, so material efficiency isn't really a large benefit. Most of the process in terms of time is moving the pieces into position and assembling them, while making steel beams and cables are both very fast and mature processes, so that's not good either.
And what the fuck is the AI going to do, generate a blueprint that's just a bunch of noise?
I once asked ChatGPT to generate an svg file of a star shape, it completely failed across multiple attempts.
But I’m sure it could definitely generate the files necessary to 3D print a safe steel beam.