Emerging Construction Technology Company Seeks to Change the Future of Home Building Through Automation
The future of construction has changed thanks to the advances in prefabrication technology and automated solutions. However, one company aims to improve housing construction thanks to its “production-as-a-service” platform. Mighty Buildings is a startup based in Oakland, CA. Their mission, to create affordable and sustainable homes with a clean contemporary aesthetic, is made possible thanks to highly specific 3D printing technologies.
According to the Mighty Buildings site, they are “the first company to achieve certification under the UL 3401 standard for evaluating building structures and assemblies.” The idea of 3D printed structures and buildings is not new. Across the globe, several projects have used implemented 3D print fabrication, robots, and machine learning to build more efficiently. For the Oakland-based company their printers use a specific thermoset composite called Light Stone Material (LSM). What makes their fabrication process faster than most traditional construction methods is due to the LSM’s reaction to UV light. Once the material is exposed to this light it hardens faster, making it more effective than most building materials like concrete or plaster.
The construction industry creates enormous amounts of waste every year. With the growing attention to sustainability efforts and how the architecture and construction industry impacts the environment, firms have made efforts towards mitigating waste production on their sites. While this process takes time to fully implement across project sites, it’s companies like Mighty Buildings that are experimenting with new ways to improve construction methods. Their numerous case studies and identify how their process challenges waste production while providing opportunities to decrease labor costs. Examples of their case studies include traditional panels versus 3D printed building components and conventional prefab versus fully printed shell production. Aiming at a 50% faster deployment time, the group explains that their production-as-service platform will “automate up to 80 percent of the building process.”
Since the emergence of 3D printing in the construction process the benefits of prefabrication, the use of AI, and machine learning have rallied supports as well as those who oppose these new methods. Mighty Buildings is one of many companies that exemplify the future of construction automation and the use of 3D printed fabrication at various building scales.
