An Austin startup that has captivated the nation with its large-scale 3D printers that can build a home in a day or two on a low materials budget is out with a new use case -- military structures.
ICON, which has 3D printed homes in Austin and Mexico, has teamed up with the Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Unit to 3D print a structure used to hide military vehicles at Camp Pendleton in California.
What was expected to be a 40- to 48-hour building project to print four connected 15-foot-tall vehicle hide structures was iterated down to 36 hours. It did so with its Vulcan 3D printer and a crew of eight Marines who were trained on how to use the system, its software and building techniques.
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"This marked the first time non-ICON employees were the primary operators of our equipment and they did an incredible job printing the vehicle hide structure,” Michael Harper, director of field operations for ICON, said in a statement. “After getting a glimpse of what 3D printing can accomplish, the Marines had great ideas for other applications of this technology, and we can’t wait to assist in making those ideas become a reality.”
While the news is just coming out Friday, ICON and DIU have been working for about a year to demonstrate how 3D printing could be used by the military. The quickly-built structures have applications both for military operations and crisis response efforts.
“There are commercial technologies that provide one area of excellence in robotic building, but few that tie all the necessary aspects together in a way that makes construction instantly accessible to the novice without any software engineer training,” Jeremiah Diacogiannis, DIU program manager, U.S. Navy Lt., said in a news release. “The design of new structures, from shelters to bridges, can be done in less time and with fewer hands via simple, intuitive commands on a touchscreen tablet or smartphone and executed by the robotics system at the push of a button.”
ICON, founded in 2017 by CEO Jason Ballard, CTO Alex Le Roux and co-founder Evan Loomis, was the first American company to get a building permit for a 3D printed home, which debuted in Austin in 2018. It has raised about $35 million in funding, including a $26 million round earlier this year.
The company was recently featured in an episode of Apple TV's new series "Home."
