According to housing forecasts, Maine needs more than 84,000 homes of all kinds by the end of the decade.
And state officials are hopeful that the University of Maine's bio-based 3D printed home will play a role in easing the housing crunch.
The 600 square foot modular home, unveiled last fall at the Orono campus, was printed with wood residuals. And it has successfully survived its first Maine winter.
"Then we had 45-below wind chill factors. You remember that? And we were concerned about how this house [might] expand and contract," Habib Dagher, executive director of the university's Advanced Structures and Composites Center, said last week at a MaineHousing conference in Portland. "Is it going to crack somewhere? And the good news is, it worked as expected. We didn't see any issues so far."
A second home will be printed within the next year. This time, Dagher said, a family will live inside it.
Dagher said the goal is to print one home within two days.
The university will break ground next summer on a new factory that will train engineers and scale up 3D printing production. Dagher said the factory should be complete by 2026, and it will be used to print nine new homes for a small neighborhood that the university is developing with the community non-profit Penquis.
The materials needed to print the first home cost $40,000, not including the appliances inside.
"At $40,000 to have a completed house ready to be bolted together, I think is a good start," Dagher said. "We think we have a good opportunity to drive costs down."
