If you give it a big job, it freezes halfway and just spins its wheels as fast as it can until you unplug it.
It refuses to paint yellow lines when it's out of blue paint.
It asks you for feedback after doing any and every job.
It doesn't have good Linux support.
It has no off button. The only modes are printing, standby at half power, or unplugged.
When you want to just print a small blue square on the floor, it makes xxxjuukkktsssssruuuuukkkttt sounds for 5 minutes, pauses for another 2, zooms at max speed to the location on the floor, pauses for 10 seconds, and begins doing the actual job it was designed to do, but does it in a shade of blueish brown.
It gets half-way through the job, but runs out of paint. You load the new paint but instead of continuing, it fills the entire site with a big test print that uses 10% of the paint.
Randomly, it'll run a head cleaning cycle that involves spraying large amounts of paint into the neighbour's driveway before cleaning itself on their lawn.
Seems like a missed opportunity. Why not fill a built in sponge with that paint instead, and when the sponge is fully saturated it's time to throw out the whole machine and buy another one?
Lets not leave the Service people out, they want to get a bonus this year, too.
So make the sponge replaceable, but only with a field maintenance call-out. The sponge unit will have an NFC chip in it that if it's removed will lock the unit out until a Technician access code is entered to restore the unit.
We can sell it as a whole periodic maintenance thing - give the service guy a can of air-duster and a roll of paper towel to wipe the thing off.
(I feel dirty even writing this because I'm sure someone is taking notes and thinking these are great ideas)
I remembered hearing a podcast about a startup robotics company doing the same thing; a little search and they actually have a comparison page between their product and HP's:
The landing page and FAQ heavily imply that HP's cloud service is the only way to control the thing. Spec sheet shows the robot as having “Connectivity: Bluetooth, 4G, WiFi”, so it can connect to the cell network directly: https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/getpdf.aspx/c08982823.pdf
Landing page sez “How HP SitePrint works: Use the HP plugin to get a robot-ready file … Save the 2D .dxf file into the cloud”. FAQ agrees, under “How do I control the robotic layout solution?” https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/site-print/layout-robot/fa...
If HP cloud is the only way, is there a Privacy Policy for this? Would HP store the DXF beyond the time the layout gets uploaded and the robot finishes printing? Are they storing data from other sensors? Data from RTS? If they are storing anything, are they also selling them, or selling conclusions drawn from them?
I wouldn’t be surprised if many construction sites have no way to get reliable internet connection without adding complex infrastructure: think of an underground parking with poor cellular coverage even on surface (in a country without Starlink support for extra difficulty).
About 20 years ago I was working in IT, and I was responsible for the physical build out (from a shell) of 599 North Mathilda, Sunnyvale - The foundations and outer walls/roof were up - but nothing inside.
I had responsibility (working with consultants who did this for a living) to work with the project manager, and architect/GC. All of the datacenters (back when companies put data-centers in their buildings), IDFs, MDFs. The MDF in particular was complex as it combined the floors IDF + the buildings MDF/telco connections, punchdowns, and a massive Nortel Option51c set of cabinets. We carefully laid out the room - measuring the minimal possible distance for cable techs to get in between the racks. Everything was designed down to the 1/4" in the room.
I showed up (mostly randomly) with a tape measure during construction - internal walls were up - and they were off by almost 14" - which would have made the internals almost unusable for their original purpose. They had to tear down their framing, pull everything out - thankfully before any electrics/racks/hvac had been put in place.
Having something like this would have greatly reduced that possibility. Bet they end up on every site (if they aren't already).
I could have benefited from this in the construction of our house. Riddled with inaccuracies, the engineer signed off on the foundations, but we found out when the walls were up that the builders used the internal dimensions as exterior dimensions. So our house is smaller by ~250mm on each side.
We had to make so many compromises and wastages as a result. Bathrooms now smaller if we want to keep other rooms the same, bathtubs couldn't fit, aw man.
Then when the house went up to 2nd and 3rd levels, the staircase was narrow and wasn't connecting between the levels. That alone delayed us by 3 months as we had to get the architect to build a 3D model of the affected area so we could figure it out. We have to hoist furniture up through balconies as it can't fit through the stairs.
I think having some machinery that minimises human error would be very helpful.
I am an architect who worked as a contractor and as a consultant and I made an account here just to comment on this.
When you found out the builders did that, what you should have done is stopped the work and have them correct their mistake on their own dime. This is an unforgivable mistake and a team of professional should never make something like that.
Obviously I am not in your shoes, but this is insane to me. Any supervisor or consultant or surveyor visiting the site should've caught that.
We discovered/noticed this when the exterior walls were 2 meters high. They had to move around interior walls but that didn't help much.
My wife and I concluded that we got what we paid for, and you're right that in hindsight we should have taken legal action against the contractor. I don't know how breaking down the whole exterior of a house to fix it down to the foundation would feel though. At some point we thought of selling the partially completed structure.
Well, it definitely is. Now you’ve probably got to wait for a lawsuit to settle and then the work to be redone. Even in the absolute best case, this puts the project behind by months, and that’s if they don’t contest it.
You clearly have never been through a lawsuit. If they choose to fight it, it is a few years, not a few months.
Also, a lot of people who build a house do not live in them for a very long time. In fact, there is no data to show they live with them for longer than people who buy existing homes.
I am certain that if you went through this, you would find it to be a very large problem.
Honestly from what you're describing it should not have been that big of an issue. Exterior walls and trusses are very easily taken down and put back up again.
The foundation would be a pain in the ass but ultimately, as others have stated, that's kind of not your problem.
This seems like the just-world response. But how can one force this? If they just say "No" you end up taking them to court and delaying the construction of your house. You endanger the contracts for downstream work.
I had a landscaper screw up just about everything they could building a retaining wall, and they couldn't even get me an extra bag of grass seed after the fact.
Depends on the country. In France, and I think in Europe, you have 4 (IIRC) legally mandated visits during the construction. At each one of those visits, you have the right to suspend the next payment (you pay a legally mandated percentage of the house after each one of those visits).
I also had measurements issues and a contractor that tried to force it to me. I just said I will not pay until it's fixed. The next week everything was fixed.
You tell the inspector. Point out that the hallway is 25cm short of code. I'm assuming since they are using metric they aren't in the US, but at least here the contractor can't say no the inspector without losing their license.
so what? delay it. as you see the house is messed up, that's going to be an issue when it's time to sell. many people will notice a very narrow stairwell or tiny bathrooms. when we were house shopping there were many houses we passed because the stairs were too narrow, or too steep or the bathroom was tiny or some room was so tiny it didn't qualify as a bedroom in our mind or the ceilings were too low. all those tiny flaws cost the seller serious money and reduced the number of buyers.
To add more context, the staircase is within local building standards minimums. Our architect at least was able to enforce that.
The bathrooms have slightly smaller tubs, though we scratched one of the larger tubs while trying to fit it in, and the supplier wouldn't accept it. It's still in our garage lol.
We were building on a contract where we paid for material at cost, and the contractor made their fee on the labour. They were inexperienced, I'd obviously never use them nor recommend them. We made them pay for most of the damages that we could quantify, and for things like crooked walls/non-90° corners we couldn't really do much.
To an untrained eye, the house is not bad, but we know where all the mistakes are.
Also im the US builders routinely create a separate shell corporation for each job so it can simply go bankrupt if they get sued rather than paying out.
Translating for folks not natively familiar with millimeters - this is 25cm, or about ~10 inches.
Doesn't sound like a lot, but you're losing a foot and a half across a dimension of a house. That's very easily into the "Bathtub doesn't fit" territory.
Did you use a contractor for this build? The neighbors of my parents ran into this, but somehow the foundation team added around a foot in all dimensions. The owner of the property refused to accept anything other than a new foundation. The contractor refused and from what my Dad told me the home owner was forced to sell to the contractor by the courts as their recourse.
This story also seems a litle off unless the contractor didn't allow inspection. It'd be found in 10 seconds with a single usage of a tape measure.
We used a contractor yes. Oddly, the civil engineer signed off on the foundations. I think what happened is that the foundations might have been correct, but when they started laying bricks, they used the internal dimensions.
The foundation is normally 500-600mm wide.
Another funny story is that we have a concrete column in the living room that was meant to be 250mm x 250mm. The subcontractor decided to box it in and pour it before we came to inspect. He made it 450mm x 450mm.
So we have this giant concrete thing in the passage.
If some of it wasn't as embarrassing, I'd blog about it with photos.
So a 250 x 250 column became 450 x 450? That's a 3.24 times increase in cross sectional area. This would imply something like a safety factor of 12 if the standard safety factor of 4 was used in the original engineering.
I guess concrete must be really cheap whereever you are? I don't know many subcontractors excited about using 3 times the concrete for something.
As a high-end residential GC, I'm very interested in this product. We have incorporated Leica Totalstation and BLK360 into our projects. It assists confirming layouts, as-built conditions, and communicating with design professionals working remotely.
It's easy enough to add Leica cameras to your Leica Geosystems deployment, but then you need to do geotechncial work in-house so that you can complete the Leica trifecta.
I wonder how it avoids pipes stubbed up through the slab, or electrical EMT, etc. or how it avoids mistakes made during the rough-in.
What if the plumber missed a drain or supply by an inch? Guessing the robot doesn't adjust its outline. I.e. if a sewer stub is wrong by a few inches, the wall needs to be moved to fit the toilet, or the slab needs to be busted up and the sewer line relocated.
I suppose if it gets some of this wrong, it'll be obvious, and a human can correct it.
Realistically, if the plumber missed a drain or supply by an inch, it's probably fine to just move the wall by a few inches...but it ought to go back to engineering to verify that's so, and engineering can redraw the prints for the robot.
It's almost certainly not the layout guy's job to decide that the bathroom can be 3" larger than it was and the lobby 3" smaller.
I deal with this relatively often in a machining context - People complain that they'd rather just make simple parts on the Bridgeport manual mill rather than a CNC, because they can adjust on the fly with the manual mill but have to get the CAD changed so that CAM can adapt to the modifications. But when they make it manually, and a year later we need to ship out a replacement part or develop an ECO... if you did it by updating the CAD then the replacement part will fit. If you just freehanded it, the part will not fit.
I think the market is more towards industrial scale sites like data centers and Amazon warehouses and factories where equipment installation is happening right behind JIT layout.
Places where high precision matters and services aren’t connected to the endpoint at the slab. That’s not most construction because progressive refinement is how most things are built.
The concern is not the course, but the ability to adjust a layout due to deviations from the plan due to normal construction errors.
For example a pipe might not be in the location shown on plan for many reasons ranging from simple human error to a delta between the plan location when the pipe was layed and the time the robot got its data…keep in mind that when the pipe went in there was only dirt, not anything to accept ink.
But at that point it's back to engineering to figure out what to do (leave the pipe where it is and adjust around it _or_ move the pipe - possibly cutting concrete and perhaps untensioning/retensioning post-tensioned cables at substantial delay/cost) or move the piece of equipment that the penetration is serving.
One nice thing about automation like this is that the "as built" plans are more likely to be accurate because the only way to get "the computer" and "the robot" to stop squawking is to change the plans they are operating off of.
If this can't handle dirt surfaces, future generations/models probably will if there's demand. Perhaps such models would use spray paint/stencils or driving pins into the ground for marking purposes (or something more practical - I'm a software guy and this sounds like a hardware problem!).
My experience is with small residential builds but I would hope on large projects the location of each "unmovable" pipe/conduit etc that will end up penetrating a slab is already carefully verified before the next step is taken (such as placing concrete). Hopefully this is done with a total station rather than guys with chalk lines and tape measures. But a solution like this could reduce manual checking mistakes (of course, it's less likely to result in an experienced subcontractor noticing that the plan must be wrong because there's no reason for a conduit for 1KV electrical cables to come up 2cm away from a toilet trap in a multi-stall public bathroom - GIGO).
each "unmovable" pipe/conduit etc that will end up penetrating a slab is already carefully verified before the next step is taken (such as placing concrete)
My experience is as an architect.
The CAD file isn’t the building no matter how much everyone might wish it were.
Even if the plans were the building odds of everybody using the same plan revision all the time is just about zero.
And most of the time, nobody is gonna pay for a super accurate as-built BIM. Because the point of the exercise is a certificate of occupancy.
The Logo Turtle was originally a robot. The on-screen turtle was added later to make Logo and its pedagogy economical for the computers schools were likely to have (a single Apple II per classroom, if that).
I can only see this getting used by very large scale contractors. Framers for your standard house are probably just going to keep using chalk lines (maybe a laser line too these days). "Precision up to +/- 1/32 inch" really isn't necessary in framing.
agreed, though I can see it making some sense in those specific situations, e.g.:
>PCL reduces cost by 86% on interior curved lines layout at Vancouver airport
for random bits of complicated-shape fashion in a giant flat open area, I can see how it could almost immediately pay for itself.
that said... at that point it's probably competing with "we put a projector on the ceiling for a day, and went over the lines with chalk". which is quite cheap.
> Enjoy a pay as you go model… No matter how big or small your business is. HP SitePrint has bundled a comprehensive support contract into a pay as you go usage rate, so you only pay for what you use.
It sounds like HP is continuing to go the subscription route to use one of these “printers”.
It's a workable solution to a large problem with these devices. Do you spend $75,000* on one of these when you only use it once a week or once a month?
(* just a wild ass guess. I have no idea what this thing costs)
It's actually not bad the issue is you need perfect prep and conditions.
We don't pour concrete underneath covers very often. They need it to be perfectly broom, swept and clean. They also need to cover over it just in case to moisture humidity gets down. Once it prints it does stay.
Dusty is a little bit better. The benefit is HP works off of Trimble so if you're in that ecosystem.
Trimble changed their business model so they've increased their profits but they haven't gained any more clients. Essentially they've learned how to double how much they make off of everyone.
You can shoot control off some of these generic models now that cost like four grand and they work just as good. That's less than Trimble subscription cost. I can only imagine the hp bundle coming soon.
HP gets a lot of crap for home printer quality and ink DRM, but does still have some neat products like this.
The industrial printers for example, especially the PageWide Web Press line are impressive. The T1100 is a huge beast.
Then there are the life science products that can do precision dispensing of fluids for life sciences and drug discovery. Some of them also do individual single live cell dispensing.
(1) As much as people complain, home inkjet printers do a remarkable job of printing high quality art reproductions and photos at low cost relative to alternatives, (Sure offset litho is cheaper… if you are running 10,000 prints)
(2) The key to this using quality materials. You’ve got to use good coated paper (which is relatively expensive.). You can mostly trust OEM ink although I found low-end EcoTank printers use ink that fades in six months although the higher end models like the ET-8550 are better. Look at forums and you will find many versions of “I was trying to print borderless and all I got was this inksplosion” and the common denominator is third party inks. There could be testing of third party inks that proves they are comparable to or even superior too the OEM links but as it is there is no testing because… they target a consumer who doesn’t care.
The fundamental problem with home inkjet printing is that people just don't print that much.
The average home user probably wants to print a set of 10 holiday pictures once a year. This means that every time they want to print those ink cartridges will be dried out and have clogged print heads - so they have to buy an expensive set of new cartridges to replace their barely-used ones.
It is why laser printing is so often suggested for home users: you can let a printer rot for several years and still reliably print a couple of dozen pages when you finally need it again. The downside is that they do a rather poor job at printing photos so now there are even fewer reasons to use it, and you only need it once every couple of years to print out a contract to sign or something.
I've personally given up on owning printers. They don't make the rock-solid HP / Brother workhorses anymore, and I can't be bothered to deal with all the proprietary "smart" crap they are pushing these days. If I want something printed, I'll just go to the local library.
I'd agree the average person who wants some photo prints is better off just sending the job out to Wal-Mart, some pharmacy, shutterfly or one of many competitors.
When I got a 'free' inkjet printer I realized I couldn't just make 10 anime prints and come back six monhths later and make 10 more so I committed to print something every day which I did for maybe 2.5 years and it turned out to be quite an adventure. To feed that machine I got serious about taking photographs, when that sucked up all my time I fell out of the printing habit!
TBH my LaserJet 451dn died recently and I bought brother colour 3270cdw. The quality of colours is awful, almost unbearable. I remember I could print a photo with HP but the Brother fails that task spectacularly for some reason - quickly colours go to overdrive and bleed
Hey guys and gals, before giving me a downvote do you have any resolutions for me? I've been searching for it quite a long time, and would accept any drivers or color profiles that could help. However it seems that color profiles are not a remedy. I was even thinking of switching back to HP but I'm scared of toner prices and remote bricking
Costs only $149.99 but refills are $279,415.37, but if pay a monthly subscription at a quarter of that they send you a new time-locked cartridge every month.
It's really amazing to see how far HP has fallen. They used to make brilliant printers that were top-quality, easy to service, and overall met the whole "Just Works" thing.
Then some time in the late 90s/early 2000s they let the bean counters at it, and they've become the poster child of terrible product design optimised to extract the maximum revenue at all costs from customers.
I honestly don't care how revolutionary or awesome a product is - if it's from HP I'm staying away, and would recommend everyone else to do so. The company deserves to die.
It reads construction blueprints and prints the necessary lines on the floor. Workers use the lines to assist with building walls, drilling holes, all the stuff that would need careful measurement before executing.
Cool! From HP! The robot only costs $1,500 but a two pack of extra sharpies for it costs $48,000. Before you can use it, you must install 5 petabytes of HP drivers.
Weirdly it turns out to be cheaper/faster than paying a human being to do the same thing in use cases where you have large concrete slabs with complex walls/casework layout
I read the marketing blurb twice but still have no idea what this is for.
It draws on the floor for construction projects? Why?
Either there's no building or there's a building. If there's no building, then where does it draw on? If the building is already there, then what's the drawing for?
It's for the phase where there is part of a building. Specifically, when your building looks like [0] - so basically just an empty concrete shell.
With a lot of commercial buildings it is up to the tenant to install the interior walls, as everyone will have slightly different requirements. The Twin Towers were a great example of this: all of the structural support was done in the exterior walls and the center core, so you had a huge empty space you could fill in however you wanted.
The robot draws on the bare concrete floor, so all the carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and hvac technicians will install their stuff in the right place. Turns out having to rework your plans because someone installed a big expensive pipe in the wrong place is a huge hassle...
## How it works
### CAD preparation
1. You need a 2D CAD file. If you have a 3D model, convert it into a 2D .dxf CAD file.
2. Insert additional printing information and instructions and use the HP Plug-in to get a robot-ready file.
3. Save the 2D .dxf CAD file into the cloud. Maintain version control and share revisions with field operators.
### Site Preparations
1. Clear layout area as for manual layout. No need for a broom-swept floor.
2. Make sure that control points used for Robotic Total Station setup are accurately marked. The layout is as accurate as the control points.
### Solution setup
1. Set up the Robotic Total Station and shoot the control points.
2. Lock the Robotic Total Station to the robot tracking prism.
3. Connect the Robotic Total Station wirelessly to HP SitePrint through the user interface (tablet, phone, laptop, etc.).
### Job execution
1. Open the CAD file on the control panel, select the print area, and submit the job.
2. Maintain a line of sight between the robot tracking prism and the Robotic Total Station.
3. Choose between different inks for different types of layouts.
4. The robot avoids collisions with obstacles.
5. HP SitePrint is robust enough to work on rough and bumpy surfaces.
### End-to-End management
1. HP SitePrint cloud allows sharing of the latest CAD files with all stakeholders, so you can monitor job progress from the office and manage accounting reports.
Take your pick:
If you give it a big job, it freezes halfway and just spins its wheels as fast as it can until you unplug it.
It refuses to paint yellow lines when it's out of blue paint.
It asks you for feedback after doing any and every job.
It doesn't have good Linux support.
It has no off button. The only modes are printing, standby at half power, or unplugged.
When you want to just print a small blue square on the floor, it makes xxxjuukkktsssssruuuuukkkttt sounds for 5 minutes, pauses for another 2, zooms at max speed to the location on the floor, pauses for 10 seconds, and begins doing the actual job it was designed to do, but does it in a shade of blueish brown.
It gets half-way through the job, but runs out of paint. You load the new paint but instead of continuing, it fills the entire site with a big test print that uses 10% of the paint.
Randomly, it'll run a head cleaning cycle that involves spraying large amounts of paint into the neighbour's driveway before cleaning itself on their lawn.
Seems like a missed opportunity. Why not fill a built in sponge with that paint instead, and when the sponge is fully saturated it's time to throw out the whole machine and buy another one?
Lets not leave the Service people out, they want to get a bonus this year, too.
So make the sponge replaceable, but only with a field maintenance call-out. The sponge unit will have an NFC chip in it that if it's removed will lock the unit out until a Technician access code is entered to restore the unit.
We can sell it as a whole periodic maintenance thing - give the service guy a can of air-duster and a roll of paper towel to wipe the thing off.
(I feel dirty even writing this because I'm sure someone is taking notes and thinking these are great ideas)
+ If your subscription expires while it's printing, it freezes and you have to carry it back home.
That sounds just like my HP printer at home, I wonder if it's the same internals.
Just need to add that after being on for a day you get a blue screen with some hex numbers on it.
If it's been on for less than a day, you have to power cycle it for it to connect to apple devices.
Finally if you power cycle it, it complains about being power cycled incorrectly and does nothing for 10 minutes.
thatsthejoke.gif
...printing is cloud based and subscription only...
Edit: (I was joking and it's really cloud based, omfg)
epic slashdot post fellow redditor. here, have this thinkgeek tshirt that says "no i will not fix your printer". le epic
I remembered hearing a podcast about a startup robotics company doing the same thing; a little search and they actually have a comparison page between their product and HP's:
https://www.dustyrobotics.com/compare/fieldprinter-vs-sitepr...
So Dusty is for SMBs and SitePrint is for clueless Corporations, like Oracle.
Thank you. I wondered immediately on seeing this if HP had just acquired those guys.
The landing page and FAQ heavily imply that HP's cloud service is the only way to control the thing. Spec sheet shows the robot as having “Connectivity: Bluetooth, 4G, WiFi”, so it can connect to the cell network directly: https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/getpdf.aspx/c08982823.pdf
Landing page sez “How HP SitePrint works: Use the HP plugin to get a robot-ready file … Save the 2D .dxf file into the cloud”. FAQ agrees, under “How do I control the robotic layout solution?” https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/site-print/layout-robot/fa...
If HP cloud is the only way, is there a Privacy Policy for this? Would HP store the DXF beyond the time the layout gets uploaded and the robot finishes printing? Are they storing data from other sensors? Data from RTS? If they are storing anything, are they also selling them, or selling conclusions drawn from them?
I wouldn’t be surprised if many construction sites have no way to get reliable internet connection without adding complex infrastructure: think of an underground parking with poor cellular coverage even on surface (in a country without Starlink support for extra difficulty).
About 20 years ago I was working in IT, and I was responsible for the physical build out (from a shell) of 599 North Mathilda, Sunnyvale - The foundations and outer walls/roof were up - but nothing inside.
I had responsibility (working with consultants who did this for a living) to work with the project manager, and architect/GC. All of the datacenters (back when companies put data-centers in their buildings), IDFs, MDFs. The MDF in particular was complex as it combined the floors IDF + the buildings MDF/telco connections, punchdowns, and a massive Nortel Option51c set of cabinets. We carefully laid out the room - measuring the minimal possible distance for cable techs to get in between the racks. Everything was designed down to the 1/4" in the room.
I showed up (mostly randomly) with a tape measure during construction - internal walls were up - and they were off by almost 14" - which would have made the internals almost unusable for their original purpose. They had to tear down their framing, pull everything out - thankfully before any electrics/racks/hvac had been put in place.
Having something like this would have greatly reduced that possibility. Bet they end up on every site (if they aren't already).
Was there ever a 'why' given? Did someone not take into account the width of the framing or something weird?
Unfortunately not much has changed in 20 years
Can confirm.
Hah, I briefly worked in that building! Never dealt with the MDF/IDF though, was just doing software at that point.
I could have benefited from this in the construction of our house. Riddled with inaccuracies, the engineer signed off on the foundations, but we found out when the walls were up that the builders used the internal dimensions as exterior dimensions. So our house is smaller by ~250mm on each side.
We had to make so many compromises and wastages as a result. Bathrooms now smaller if we want to keep other rooms the same, bathtubs couldn't fit, aw man.
Then when the house went up to 2nd and 3rd levels, the staircase was narrow and wasn't connecting between the levels. That alone delayed us by 3 months as we had to get the architect to build a 3D model of the affected area so we could figure it out. We have to hoist furniture up through balconies as it can't fit through the stairs.
I think having some machinery that minimises human error would be very helpful.
I am an architect who worked as a contractor and as a consultant and I made an account here just to comment on this.
When you found out the builders did that, what you should have done is stopped the work and have them correct their mistake on their own dime. This is an unforgivable mistake and a team of professional should never make something like that.
Obviously I am not in your shoes, but this is insane to me. Any supervisor or consultant or surveyor visiting the site should've caught that.
We discovered/noticed this when the exterior walls were 2 meters high. They had to move around interior walls but that didn't help much.
My wife and I concluded that we got what we paid for, and you're right that in hindsight we should have taken legal action against the contractor. I don't know how breaking down the whole exterior of a house to fix it down to the foundation would feel though. At some point we thought of selling the partially completed structure.
> I don't know how breaking down the whole exterior of a house to fix it down to the foundation would feel though.
Not your problem.
Well, it definitely is. Now you’ve probably got to wait for a lawsuit to settle and then the work to be redone. Even in the absolute best case, this puts the project behind by months, and that’s if they don’t contest it.
yes but a built house is a lifelong thing. multiple decades. a few months here is not worth decades of pain
You clearly have never been through a lawsuit. If they choose to fight it, it is a few years, not a few months.
Also, a lot of people who build a house do not live in them for a very long time. In fact, there is no data to show they live with them for longer than people who buy existing homes.
I am certain that if you went through this, you would find it to be a very large problem.
Honestly from what you're describing it should not have been that big of an issue. Exterior walls and trusses are very easily taken down and put back up again.
The foundation would be a pain in the ass but ultimately, as others have stated, that's kind of not your problem.
This seems like the just-world response. But how can one force this? If they just say "No" you end up taking them to court and delaying the construction of your house. You endanger the contracts for downstream work.
I had a landscaper screw up just about everything they could building a retaining wall, and they couldn't even get me an extra bag of grass seed after the fact.
Depends on the country. In France, and I think in Europe, you have 4 (IIRC) legally mandated visits during the construction. At each one of those visits, you have the right to suspend the next payment (you pay a legally mandated percentage of the house after each one of those visits).
I also had measurements issues and a contractor that tried to force it to me. I just said I will not pay until it's fixed. The next week everything was fixed.
That makes a lot of sense as a system. No courts, just I'm not paying you until it meets specifications
Surely, a delayed house is better than a house built incorrectly, no?
Something something Nintendo video games....
The guy a few comments up wouldn't mind a day one patch lol
You tell the inspector. Point out that the hallway is 25cm short of code. I'm assuming since they are using metric they aren't in the US, but at least here the contractor can't say no the inspector without losing their license.
so what? delay it. as you see the house is messed up, that's going to be an issue when it's time to sell. many people will notice a very narrow stairwell or tiny bathrooms. when we were house shopping there were many houses we passed because the stairs were too narrow, or too steep or the bathroom was tiny or some room was so tiny it didn't qualify as a bedroom in our mind or the ceilings were too low. all those tiny flaws cost the seller serious money and reduced the number of buyers.
To add more context, the staircase is within local building standards minimums. Our architect at least was able to enforce that.
The bathrooms have slightly smaller tubs, though we scratched one of the larger tubs while trying to fit it in, and the supplier wouldn't accept it. It's still in our garage lol.
We were building on a contract where we paid for material at cost, and the contractor made their fee on the labour. They were inexperienced, I'd obviously never use them nor recommend them. We made them pay for most of the damages that we could quantify, and for things like crooked walls/non-90° corners we couldn't really do much.
To an untrained eye, the house is not bad, but we know where all the mistakes are.
Also im the US builders routinely create a separate shell corporation for each job so it can simply go bankrupt if they get sued rather than paying out.
I routinely check the age of a contractor license for just this reason
Ok and I thought having our inground pool installed crooked was bad. Where you able to get any legal/financial clawbacks because of all the hassle?
Translating for folks not natively familiar with millimeters - this is 25cm, or about ~10 inches.
Doesn't sound like a lot, but you're losing a foot and a half across a dimension of a house. That's very easily into the "Bathtub doesn't fit" territory.
The kicker is "on each side".
So the house is now [50cm | half a metre | 20 inches] shorter length overall in "both" commonly rectangular dimensions.
Take any room in your house and remove that much from it and tell me it doesn't detract from the room....
It's probably the thickness of the foundation wall.
That's awful. I hope you were able to recover damages from the builders
Did you use a contractor for this build? The neighbors of my parents ran into this, but somehow the foundation team added around a foot in all dimensions. The owner of the property refused to accept anything other than a new foundation. The contractor refused and from what my Dad told me the home owner was forced to sell to the contractor by the courts as their recourse.
This story also seems a litle off unless the contractor didn't allow inspection. It'd be found in 10 seconds with a single usage of a tape measure.
We used a contractor yes. Oddly, the civil engineer signed off on the foundations. I think what happened is that the foundations might have been correct, but when they started laying bricks, they used the internal dimensions.
The foundation is normally 500-600mm wide.
Another funny story is that we have a concrete column in the living room that was meant to be 250mm x 250mm. The subcontractor decided to box it in and pour it before we came to inspect. He made it 450mm x 450mm.
So we have this giant concrete thing in the passage.
If some of it wasn't as embarrassing, I'd blog about it with photos.
So a 250 x 250 column became 450 x 450? That's a 3.24 times increase in cross sectional area. This would imply something like a safety factor of 12 if the standard safety factor of 4 was used in the original engineering.
I guess concrete must be really cheap whereever you are? I don't know many subcontractors excited about using 3 times the concrete for something.
Did you consider adding some buffer to your plan's measurements to account for exactly these kinds of screw ups?
Given his bathtubs didn’t fit, I would guess he didn’t
As a high-end residential GC, I'm very interested in this product. We have incorporated Leica Totalstation and BLK360 into our projects. It assists confirming layouts, as-built conditions, and communicating with design professionals working remotely.
It's easy enough to add Leica cameras to your Leica Geosystems deployment, but then you need to do geotechncial work in-house so that you can complete the Leica trifecta.
What is the value to you of making the SitePrint automated (robotic)? Would it take that much human time to push one of these around? Is it precision?
We find it pencils out on jobs with large OH /pan deck slabs or SOGs over 12000SF
What are the costs like on those scanners? They look amazing!
I wonder how it avoids pipes stubbed up through the slab, or electrical EMT, etc. or how it avoids mistakes made during the rough-in.
What if the plumber missed a drain or supply by an inch? Guessing the robot doesn't adjust its outline. I.e. if a sewer stub is wrong by a few inches, the wall needs to be moved to fit the toilet, or the slab needs to be busted up and the sewer line relocated.
I suppose if it gets some of this wrong, it'll be obvious, and a human can correct it.
Realistically, if the plumber missed a drain or supply by an inch, it's probably fine to just move the wall by a few inches...but it ought to go back to engineering to verify that's so, and engineering can redraw the prints for the robot.
It's almost certainly not the layout guy's job to decide that the bathroom can be 3" larger than it was and the lobby 3" smaller.
I deal with this relatively often in a machining context - People complain that they'd rather just make simple parts on the Bridgeport manual mill rather than a CNC, because they can adjust on the fly with the manual mill but have to get the CAD changed so that CAM can adapt to the modifications. But when they make it manually, and a year later we need to ship out a replacement part or develop an ECO... if you did it by updating the CAD then the replacement part will fit. If you just freehanded it, the part will not fit.
I think the market is more towards industrial scale sites like data centers and Amazon warehouses and factories where equipment installation is happening right behind JIT layout.
Places where high precision matters and services aren’t connected to the endpoint at the slab. That’s not most construction because progressive refinement is how most things are built.
You have adjusts due to its detectors and it has a prism on it and is being continuously tracked by a total station.
It can correct course due to deviations in floor surface or obstructions pretty well.
The concern is not the course, but the ability to adjust a layout due to deviations from the plan due to normal construction errors.
For example a pipe might not be in the location shown on plan for many reasons ranging from simple human error to a delta between the plan location when the pipe was layed and the time the robot got its data…keep in mind that when the pipe went in there was only dirt, not anything to accept ink.
And it's good to catch that error ASAP.
But at that point it's back to engineering to figure out what to do (leave the pipe where it is and adjust around it _or_ move the pipe - possibly cutting concrete and perhaps untensioning/retensioning post-tensioned cables at substantial delay/cost) or move the piece of equipment that the penetration is serving.
One nice thing about automation like this is that the "as built" plans are more likely to be accurate because the only way to get "the computer" and "the robot" to stop squawking is to change the plans they are operating off of.
If this can't handle dirt surfaces, future generations/models probably will if there's demand. Perhaps such models would use spray paint/stencils or driving pins into the ground for marking purposes (or something more practical - I'm a software guy and this sounds like a hardware problem!).
My experience is with small residential builds but I would hope on large projects the location of each "unmovable" pipe/conduit etc that will end up penetrating a slab is already carefully verified before the next step is taken (such as placing concrete). Hopefully this is done with a total station rather than guys with chalk lines and tape measures. But a solution like this could reduce manual checking mistakes (of course, it's less likely to result in an experienced subcontractor noticing that the plan must be wrong because there's no reason for a conduit for 1KV electrical cables to come up 2cm away from a toilet trap in a multi-stall public bathroom - GIGO).
each "unmovable" pipe/conduit etc that will end up penetrating a slab is already carefully verified before the next step is taken (such as placing concrete)
My experience is as an architect.
The CAD file isn’t the building no matter how much everyone might wish it were.
Even if the plans were the building odds of everybody using the same plan revision all the time is just about zero.
And most of the time, nobody is gonna pay for a super accurate as-built BIM. Because the point of the exercise is a certificate of occupancy.
This looks like a physical manifestation of a the "Logo" environment we had in our elementary school computer lab.
https://logothings.github.io/logothings/AppleLogo.html
Drawing turtle bots have a history almost as long as Logo https://blog.adafruit.com/2018/05/03/the-history-of-turtle-b...
I wonder if this is in collaboration with this group
This one called Dusty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pq2ZG19hGg
Oh nice someone else mentioned it
Competitor
In the 1980s there were “turtle graphics” robots if LOGO wasn’t real enough for you,
The Logo Turtle was originally a robot. The on-screen turtle was added later to make Logo and its pedagogy economical for the computers schools were likely to have (a single Apple II per classroom, if that).
I can only see this getting used by very large scale contractors. Framers for your standard house are probably just going to keep using chalk lines (maybe a laser line too these days). "Precision up to +/- 1/32 inch" really isn't necessary in framing.
agreed, though I can see it making some sense in those specific situations, e.g.:
>PCL reduces cost by 86% on interior curved lines layout at Vancouver airport
for random bits of complicated-shape fashion in a giant flat open area, I can see how it could almost immediately pay for itself.
that said... at that point it's probably competing with "we put a projector on the ceiling for a day, and went over the lines with chalk". which is quite cheap.
Some small builders probably will because it will make business sense for their specific business.
And others will because some builders are as attracted to gee-whiz its new and shiny as in any other business.
HP lol, yeah sure. I wouldn't touch anything HP with 100m long pole.
I imagine soon they could implement something like this...
"Robot error, you've reached wear & tear limit on your left wheel: 1 mile. Please buy a new wheel from HP shop, Price: $2999"
"Robot error, looks like your new wheel is not compatible with your old right wheel. Please buy a new right wheel..."
"Robot error, you've reached recharge limit of 50 cycles, on your internal robot battery..."
> Enjoy a pay as you go model… No matter how big or small your business is. HP SitePrint has bundled a comprehensive support contract into a pay as you go usage rate, so you only pay for what you use.
It sounds like HP is continuing to go the subscription route to use one of these “printers”.
It's a workable solution to a large problem with these devices. Do you spend $75,000* on one of these when you only use it once a week or once a month?
(* just a wild ass guess. I have no idea what this thing costs)
As a specialized commercial contractor and former large format printer, I won't touch HP equipment with 10 ft. pole saw..
Don't forget to subscribe for monthly Ink Cartridges for your robot XD
It's actually not bad the issue is you need perfect prep and conditions.
We don't pour concrete underneath covers very often. They need it to be perfectly broom, swept and clean. They also need to cover over it just in case to moisture humidity gets down. Once it prints it does stay.
Dusty is a little bit better. The benefit is HP works off of Trimble so if you're in that ecosystem.
Trimble changed their business model so they've increased their profits but they haven't gained any more clients. Essentially they've learned how to double how much they make off of everyone.
You can shoot control off some of these generic models now that cost like four grand and they work just as good. That's less than Trimble subscription cost. I can only imagine the hp bundle coming soon.
HP gets a lot of crap for home printer quality and ink DRM, but does still have some neat products like this.
The industrial printers for example, especially the PageWide Web Press line are impressive. The T1100 is a huge beast.
Then there are the life science products that can do precision dispensing of fluids for life sciences and drug discovery. Some of them also do individual single live cell dispensing.
(1) As much as people complain, home inkjet printers do a remarkable job of printing high quality art reproductions and photos at low cost relative to alternatives, (Sure offset litho is cheaper… if you are running 10,000 prints)
(2) The key to this using quality materials. You’ve got to use good coated paper (which is relatively expensive.). You can mostly trust OEM ink although I found low-end EcoTank printers use ink that fades in six months although the higher end models like the ET-8550 are better. Look at forums and you will find many versions of “I was trying to print borderless and all I got was this inksplosion” and the common denominator is third party inks. There could be testing of third party inks that proves they are comparable to or even superior too the OEM links but as it is there is no testing because… they target a consumer who doesn’t care.
The fundamental problem with home inkjet printing is that people just don't print that much.
The average home user probably wants to print a set of 10 holiday pictures once a year. This means that every time they want to print those ink cartridges will be dried out and have clogged print heads - so they have to buy an expensive set of new cartridges to replace their barely-used ones.
It is why laser printing is so often suggested for home users: you can let a printer rot for several years and still reliably print a couple of dozen pages when you finally need it again. The downside is that they do a rather poor job at printing photos so now there are even fewer reasons to use it, and you only need it once every couple of years to print out a contract to sign or something.
I've personally given up on owning printers. They don't make the rock-solid HP / Brother workhorses anymore, and I can't be bothered to deal with all the proprietary "smart" crap they are pushing these days. If I want something printed, I'll just go to the local library.
I'd agree the average person who wants some photo prints is better off just sending the job out to Wal-Mart, some pharmacy, shutterfly or one of many competitors.
When I got a 'free' inkjet printer I realized I couldn't just make 10 anime prints and come back six monhths later and make 10 more so I committed to print something every day which I did for maybe 2.5 years and it turned out to be quite an adventure. To feed that machine I got serious about taking photographs, when that sucked up all my time I fell out of the printing habit!
See https://www.behance.net/gallery/232344867/Life-is-Better-Wit...
It's not about the technology itself, it's about everything that surrounds it, the software, the commercial side. I will go out of my way to avoid HP.
TBH my LaserJet 451dn died recently and I bought brother colour 3270cdw. The quality of colours is awful, almost unbearable. I remember I could print a photo with HP but the Brother fails that task spectacularly for some reason - quickly colours go to overdrive and bleed
Hey guys and gals, before giving me a downvote do you have any resolutions for me? I've been searching for it quite a long time, and would accept any drivers or color profiles that could help. However it seems that color profiles are not a remedy. I was even thinking of switching back to HP but I'm scared of toner prices and remote bricking
> before giving me a downvote do you have any resolutions for me?
Maybe the problem is your original comment didn't seem like you were asking for any kind of help to resolve this.
Logo Turtle: Enterprise Edition.
Can only be used with special DRM'd HP pencils. Must download and register with the app after it draws 25m of lines to continue use.
Costs only $149.99 but refills are $279,415.37, but if pay a monthly subscription at a quarter of that they send you a new time-locked cartridge every month.
PC LOAD LUMBER
I'll buy it if Brother produces it. HP is a synonym of something else for me.
It's really amazing to see how far HP has fallen. They used to make brilliant printers that were top-quality, easy to service, and overall met the whole "Just Works" thing.
Then some time in the late 90s/early 2000s they let the bean counters at it, and they've become the poster child of terrible product design optimised to extract the maximum revenue at all costs from customers.
I honestly don't care how revolutionary or awesome a product is - if it's from HP I'm staying away, and would recommend everyone else to do so. The company deserves to die.
I was almost expecting to see a 3D printer with very expensive cement cartridges.
From the "How HP SitePrint works" video:
> Uploading to HP SitePrint Cloud
No thanks.
https://theonion.com/hp-offers-that-cloud-thing-everyone-is-...
Color ink sold separately
Robot: $1,500
Refills: $5,000
Gotta love /s how inconsistent they are with punctuations.
Anyone know of a small DIY equivalent for e.g. room sized layout?
Anyone know what this thing does...?
It reads construction blueprints and prints the necessary lines on the floor. Workers use the lines to assist with building walls, drilling holes, all the stuff that would need careful measurement before executing.
[flagged]
Just use a drone with a laser
I saw the title and hoped someone had finally built a tool that can correctly print websites with fidelity.
After my professional experience with their printers, I won’t touch anything coming from that company ever again.
I can very well imagine how they can build in massive amounts of new enshitification methods to make you pay even more.
I see some similarities in design here.
https://www.rvpartscountry.com/32326-thetford.html
Yeah but how much does the ink cost…
Cool! From HP! The robot only costs $1,500 but a two pack of extra sharpies for it costs $48,000. Before you can use it, you must install 5 petabytes of HP drivers.
Most of the 5 petabytes is a model used to determine if your sharpies are counterfeit.
They remotely brick your Sharpies even if they are original because of a bug in the software
Don't give them ideas.
Joking aside, I don't believe HP developed this product, they almost certainly bought the company that makes it.
My hunch?
Seen these things before.
I doubt it has been DRMd to hell yet, and I doubt they upgraded to show PC LOAD LETTER at all times, but why did they add this to their portfolio?
I think they did, actually. (I worked at HP for 19 years, and I know the guy in their Barcelona site who started it.)
Don't forget the complementary installation of Norton Antivirus
Weirdly it turns out to be cheaper/faster than paying a human being to do the same thing in use cases where you have large concrete slabs with complex walls/casework layout
It's cloud based, yep :D
do you have sharpie that won't grind down to zero on concrete after 3ft ?
Not on genuine HP concrete.
Hp concrete actually exists
Hopefully they're using something like a paint pen with a roller and not a Sharpie the way you're thinking of it.
parent is the one who suggested sharpies.
i'll actually bet on some variety of inkjet/spray as it will better deal with surface imperfections and won't wear out
You beat me to it!
Not sure what the point of this is.
3d printed houses are here and make this irrelevant
I read the marketing blurb twice but still have no idea what this is for.
It draws on the floor for construction projects? Why?
Either there's no building or there's a building. If there's no building, then where does it draw on? If the building is already there, then what's the drawing for?
It's for the phase where there is part of a building. Specifically, when your building looks like [0] - so basically just an empty concrete shell.
With a lot of commercial buildings it is up to the tenant to install the interior walls, as everyone will have slightly different requirements. The Twin Towers were a great example of this: all of the structural support was done in the exterior walls and the center core, so you had a huge empty space you could fill in however you wanted.
The robot draws on the bare concrete floor, so all the carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and hvac technicians will install their stuff in the right place. Turns out having to rework your plans because someone installed a big expensive pipe in the wrong place is a huge hassle...
[0]: https://as1.ftcdn.net/jpg/09/64/72/08/1000_F_964720843_sLWAm...
Thank you!
I’m trying to put myself in your shoes here, but I don’t understand how you wouldn’t know that (no building) to (building) isn’t a single step.
I just couldn't imagine any phase during construction where there's a floor that can be drawn on but no walls.
Another commenter explained that this is actually about drywalls that are installed after the fact, which makes much more sense now.