Amidst the pandemic-fueled housing boom, newly launched company Mighty Buildings offers an attractive solution to the nation’s lumber and labor shortages: 3D-printed homes that can be built with 95% fewer labor hours at twice the speed of conventional construction.
Operating out of an Oakland warehouse, the Y Combinator–backed startup constructs prefab homes with their Big-G Printer, a 20-foot-tall 3D printer that, at speeds of 120 millimeters per second, can print a 350-square-foot studio in less than 24 hours. The homes are made of Light Stone, a thermoset composite material that hardens when exposed to UV light.
Instead of 3D printing sections of each home for on-site assembly, the machine maximizes cost savings by printing the home’s entire structural shell—thus automating the building process by up to 80% with cost savings of 20% to 30% compared to traditional prefab methods.
