Makerbot’s first 3D-printed house
You might not recognize the 3D-printed model home above at first glance. (I didn't.) It was one of the models displayed today by Bre Pettis at the unveiling of the Makerbot Replicator 2, the fourth-generation desktop 3D printer designed and manufactured here in Brooklyn that sports a new 100-micron resolution and a larger fabrication table–perfect for architectural models. Like this one, produced by one of the Makerbot staff, a former architect.
But it's not just any ol' pleasantly generic American home. It's a scale model of one of the Sears Catalog Homes, the mail-order domiciles that shipped ready-to-erect in railway shipping containers after your great-grandfather ordered one from the Sears & Roebuck catalog.
Makerbots might only be able to print items a little smaller than a cinder block today, but this little 3D-printed wink above shows where they hope to end up.