DRC Mayor Mathew Dickerson at the official opening of the new 3D printed Macquarie Lions Park West amenities block. Dubbo Daily Liberal 12 September 2023.
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00:00 Thank you for coming on today to something that you might not think is that exciting,
00:04 but what you're seeing behind us here is something that's revolutionary across this nation.
00:09 No matter what level of government, local government, state government, federal government,
00:13 no government across this nation before has built some public infrastructure using methodology
00:20 of 3D printing as has been used here.
00:22 I've got two of my fellow Councillors here, Councillor Shipley-Shouter and Councillor
00:25 Matt Wright.
00:26 It was Matt Wright who first brought the idea to Council of looking at 3D printing for housing
00:31 to try and solve some of the housing issues we've got.
00:34 We've allocated some housing land or some land for specifically 3D printed housing, but
00:39 in the meantime, while we're getting that ready to go, we wanted to actually use the
00:43 technology in something where the public could see it and be more comfortable with the concept.
00:47 So thanks to our staff, they worked very well with Contour 3D to actually get the toilet
00:53 block printed, the toilet block behind it printed, and the technology was absolutely
00:57 fascinating.
00:58 They set the gantry up on one weekend, a few days later, they finished printing the actual
01:03 toilet, so that replaces the work that bricklayers would typically do.
01:06 Now local tradespeople would still use for the fit out, you've still got to do the normal
01:10 fit out that you would do with a toilet block such as this, but the actual printing of the
01:13 walls was all done in a very fast, very economical method.
01:17 The price was in line with what we'd normally pay with traditional methods, but again, as
01:21 the technology improves, we expect to see the price go down, and this is step one.
01:27 The next step might be some more public infrastructure here or somewhere else in Australia, but it
01:31 won't be long before we'll see houses built in this way.
01:35 Already the Housing Minister in New South Wales is aware of this project, we've already
01:38 had a Minister from the State Government come along and inspect this because there's incredible
01:42 interest across the nation in this particular methodology, so seeing how we can build houses
01:48 quicker, build houses that are more flexible.
01:52 Architects are excited by the concept because the design can be changed to suit what an
01:56 architect might draw.
01:57 So again, it might not be that exciting thinking about the opening of a toilet block, but this
02:01 is step one on something that will see a huge progression in technology used for building
02:07 infrastructure across the nation.
02:08 [BLANK_AUDIO]