QuickBuild Homes are New Zealand leaders in the fast-growing kit-set home industry. Speed and cost are two of the key elements consumers are looking at when purchasing a kit-set home. It’s important for QuickBuild Homes to deliver a quality product at an affordable price and in the record times the company is renowned for.
The Problem - Creating Custom Parts Quickly and Efficiently
QuickBuild Homes kit-set homes are put together differently from a traditional lightweight timber frame home. They use aluminium extrusions to put the homes together. These can have quite a complex profile, and although most joins are easy to press out of metal there are a couple which are not. Creating these complex parts was causing delays in the build process.
The Solution - 3D Printing
The parts that are impossible to press from metal and now printed using a high-quality Ultimaker 3D printer. The 3D printed parts can be created to match the other parts that are pressed from metal. Enabling QuickBuild Homes to produce quality parts that are in keeping with the rest of the house.
The high quality of the Ultimaker S3 means that after three years of use, the printer has only needed maintenance once. No mean feat considering the high volume of work that gets printed. While QuickBuild Homes only has to produce a few parts for each house, a complete set takes a whole day to print, so the Ultimaker is kept very busy. The best part, the team can carry on with the rest of the job while the Ultimaker works away in the background.
Competitive Advantage of 3D Printing
When compared to the cost of making an injection mould for all the parts that are 3D printed there was no comparison. Plus with 3D printing, QuickBuild Homes has the ability to quickly prototype innovative ideas before putting them into production, allowing them to stay ahead of their competition.
New Climate Change Regulations being introduced by the New Zealand Government means it is important for QuickBuild Homes to have a viable solution before any new law changes.
3D printing helps them achieve this.
“Great service for our Ultimaker. QuickBuild Homes couldn't do our affordable easy to assemble kitset homes at the price we do without it. They actually care about the customer. V prompt service. We will continue to use them. Especially as we are the first company in NZ to get MNIE approval for the new insulation regs. It's only getting busier for us, and as we innovate more, we will be using more 3D printed parts. We have some amazing things in the pipeline which we simply couldn't do without 3D printing. Thanks to Mindits again.”
Neil Colliver, QuickBuild Homes
If you are interested in finding out more about how your business could use 3D printing - Contact us today.