Mighty Buildings Makes Stylish, 3D-Printed Prefabs Starting at $99K
An Oakland startup combines prefab design and 3D printing to create cost-saving backyard homes.
An Oakland startup combines prefab design and 3D printing to create cost-saving backyard homes.
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.
Completed in July 2020, the Mighty Duo B model installed in San Diego is a 700-square-foot ADU with one bedroom, one bath, a kitchenette, and a walk-in closet.
Paul Vu
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.
The Mighty Duo B took a total of five weeks to complete from construction to installation. In addition to production time, two weeks were spent on site work, and an addition week on on-site finish work. This timeline does not include the time needed for permitting and entitlement services.
Paul Vu
"Because we’re building homes for people to live in, we’ve been very deliberate in carrying out our vision to make housing better. This isn’t software that can be debugged on the fly," says Slava Solonitsyn, Mighty Building’s CEO and co-founder. "We’re now ready to scale our production with full confidence in our certifications and code compliance of both our material and technology."
The Mighty Duo B unit in San Diego cost approximately $314 per square foot.
Paul Vu
See the full story on Dwell.com: Mighty Buildings Makes Stylish, 3D-Printed Prefabs Starting at $99K
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