Exclusive Interview With Inventor of Contour Crafting, Dr. Khoshnavis

While we've been hearing about the Contour Crafting technique for around half a decade now, news has been quiet on that front for the last year or two. 3DPrint.com had the opportunity to interview Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, who invented the Contour Crafting technology, to follow up on the latest innovations with the technique. Contour Crafting requires large-scale, lightweight, mobile 3D printers that can construct homes, other buildings, or other large structures in a time-, waste-, and cost-effective manner. Dr. Khoshnevis notes that his company has been making such rapid progress that the first printers may be on the market within the next 1-2 years, and possibly available to educational institutions even earlier than that. The printers will be able to construct small homes, printing exterior concrete walls, insulation, and drywall, with equipment costs starting around $200k. Dr. Khoshnavis had more to say about future plans for Contour Crafting, including uses with NASA, and the lack of competition he perceives coming from China. Read what he had to say in the full article: http://3dprint.com/53437/contour-cra...dr-khoshnevis/


Below is a rendering of the Contour Crafting setup:
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/28.png

China-based Winsun has made headlines over the last year for their announcement of 3D printing construction, like last April when they said they'd 3D printed 10 houses in just one day, or this past January when they claimed to have 3D printed a mansion and a 6-story apartment building. Their claims, though, seem to be just that. The inventor of Contour Crafting, Dr. Berok Khoshnevis, and his former student, Dr. Jing Zhang, have provided more information to 3DPrint.com to clarify the truth of the 3D printing construction matter. Contour Crafting technology, which is being proven in construction uses, will be available within the next two years or so, as Dr. Khoshnevis works tirelessly to perfect it. During a meeting with Winsun's CEO Mr. Ma back in 2013, during which Dr. Khoshnevis refused a cooperative agreement, Dr. Zhang says Ma said he was "going to build it or fake it anyway." Find out more about this apparent 3D printing media scam in the full story: http://3dprint.com/57764/winsun-3d-print-fake/

I'm happy you did a story about this. This isn't the first time a Chinese company lies, cheats and steals others IP. They should all be exposed.

Here is a good example of a Chinese 3d Printing company I've even seen featured on another 3d print news website before.

CTC http://ctcprinter.com/product_detail.php?ProId=12


They straight up reverse engineered the hardware of Formlabs Form 1 and even have the nerve to use Formlabs software to run it. It even has the Formlabs logo on the screen when you turn it on.

Here is a thread on Formlabs forum discussing it http://forum.formlabs.com/t/ctc-form...knock-off/1976

I wish 3d Print would contact Formlabs and CTC and do a story similar to this article to expose CTC for being IP thieves.

Somehow, I just never took these claims seriously. I always assumed someone was telling people what they wanted to do and it got mis-represented in the media as if it was all-ready done. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that it started that way and then they ran with it. Still, what a mess of claims and IP infringement!!!

For the sake of file size I will link instead of post the picture, but here are some pics of the houses and the apartment/mansion going together that show the pieces being tossed together.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VnrNCFatSY...n3dprinted.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C9ePFoe-8n...00/winsun2.jpg

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/01/win...-building.html