The affordable housing crisis affects millions of people worldwide, but innovative solutions are emerging from unexpected corners of the technology sector. 3D printing, once confined to prototyping and small-scale manufacturing, is now revolutionizing home construction with unprecedented speed and cost efficiency. Lance Thrailkill, co-founder and CEO of PRINT3D Technologies, believes this technology holds the key to making quality housing accessible to everyone who needs it.
Rethinking How We Build Homes
Most industries have gotten faster and more efficient over the decades. Construction? Not so much. Lance sees this every day in his work. “Traditional construction is very time consuming, labor intensive, and inefficient,” he explains. Walk by any construction site and you’ll see what he means. Crews spend months hammering, sawing, and building homes the same way their grandfathers did. But 3D printing flips that whole process upside down. Instead of armies of workers, you get a machine that does most of the heavy lifting. “3D printed homes extrude concrete through a print head, layer by layer, and print a wall system that is much more durable at a better price in less time and with fewer people needed,” Lance notes. It’s like comparing hand-writing a book to using a printing press.
Speed That Changes Everything
Here’s where things get really interesting. While traditional builders measure progress in weeks and months, Lance’s team thinks in days. “We can print the structure of a house in just a few days. That kind of efficiency is revolutionary,” he says. Think about that for a second. A house structure that normally takes months gets done in days. This speed changes everything. Faster builds mean lower costs, fewer weather delays, and families moving in sooner. But it also means something bigger. When you can build this fast, you might actually put a dent in housing shortages.
Building a Complete Solution
Most companies in this space either make the printers or build the houses. Lance’s team does both. “What sets us apart is our vertical integration. Being owned by All Metals Fabricating, a world class manufacturing facility, coupled with my co-founding partner’s decades of experience in residential real estate and construction, we’ve built a company that not only prints homes, but also manufactures and sells machines,” he explains. This setup gives them serious advantages. They control quality on their machines, they can scale up production when needed, and they help other builders get into 3D printing. “This vertical integration gives us the capability to scale as quickly as needed, have control over the quality and production pricing of our machines, and help other builders around the world embrace this transformative technology,” Lance adds.
Real Impact on Housing Costs
Everyone talks about affordable housing, but Lance is actually doing something about it. “The affordability of 3D printed homes isn’t just theoretical. We’re already seeing the impact today, and we’ve just scratched the surface,” he explains. The math works because everything gets cheaper when you build faster. Less waste, fewer workers, shorter timelines. It all adds up. “By reducing material costs, minimizing labor, and accelerating timelines, PRINT3D Technologies is making it feasible to deliver quality homes in a fraction of the time and cost,” Lance notes. These aren’t small improvements. This is fundamentally changing how much it costs to build a house.
Lance keeps pushing the technology forward while working with builders who want to modernize. The housing crisis isn’t going anywhere, but solutions like this give people hope that quality homes might actually become affordable again. For anyone interested in learning more about 3D printing and housing, Lance encourages reaching out through their website or connecting on LinkedIn. The future of housing might look very different from what we’re used to, and companies like PRINT3D Technologies are showing us what’s possible.
Connect with Lance Thrailkill and PRINT3D Technologies on LinkedIn to explore how 3D printing is making housing faster, smarter, and truly affordable.
