Printed Farms is at it again in Wellington Florida, you may recall the printed garage they built which I filmed on site very early on. Since then they printed a house in Tallahassee as well which I have also filmed extensively with the contractor from the job, precision builders.
Now Printed Farms is onto their most ambitious projects yet with an equestrian facility that will have over 10,000 sqft under the roof. The massive gantry printer they use will be moved many times throughout the project and the agricultural facility consists of multiple buildings that horse owners would be familiar with.
The CEO of Printed Farms Jim actually got his start in the equestrian industry, bringing faster more competitive horses from Europe over to the USA. I had Jim on the Automate Construction Podcast to discuss the vision behind Printed Farms and also a bit about his early career dealing with horses.
Visiting this new massive project of theirs on site during the print was one of the most impressive moments thus far in my construction tech journalism career due to the sheer scale of the project. One section already has 13ft printed walls and the day I was there they were at about eye level on the second section. We ran into Adrian who has been their mixer pump operator since the very beginning. Working with new tech is hard but they are getting quite good at it.
Even if you have a perfect team there are still so many things that can delay a construction project. In this case, Printed Farms likes to use very fresh material likely due to the humidity in Florida but during the hurricanes there was some supply issue and they couldn’t get new material as fast as they would have liked. It isn’t quite readily available at the local hardware/ construction supplies store. Whenever you are dealing with uncommon tech and materials there can be a higher risk of delays if you don’t have a diverse range of supplier options. As the industry grows we can imagine printable materials being produced by every major batch plant in the country but we’ve got quite a way to go.
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