In the latest installment of our “Dear Bernie” series, posts intended to inform the Vermont Senator about the unintended, negative consequences of minimum wage hikes, we present SAM (Semi-Automated Mason), a brick laying robot designed and engineered by Construction Robotics out of New York. While SAM can do the work of 6 unionized masons each day, he never requires a break, benefits or a paycheck.
Here’s a look at SAM in action:
Each SAM can be rented at a monthly cost of ~$3,300 according to The Sun. With an average efficiency of 3,000 bricks per day, that breaks down to about 4.5 cents per brick. Meanwhile, using using Bernie’s preferred $15 per hour minimum wage rate, plus benefits, and a daily efficiency of about 500 bricks brings the human labor cost equivalent to roughly 32 cents per brick, or a little over 7x.
Of course, SAM can’t completely eliminate the need for masons on work sites just yet, as human assistance is still needed to load bricks and mortar into the system and to clean up excess mortar from joints after bricks have been laid. That said, Construction Robotics estimates that overall labor costs for bricklaying projects can be reduced by at least 50%.
And while Bernie is unlikely to rent a SAM to construct his next $575,000 lake house, we hear that someone may be taking bids for an impenetrable, yet “aesthetically pleasing”, 30-foot border wall that will span nearly 2,000 miles.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-27/meet-sam-brick-laying-robot-does-work-6-humans
That’s the goal…….. no?
Hmmm. looks to me like by the time you load and set up the robot you could have had the wall almost finished.
They even admit that you still have to have people to continuously load the machine. So according to their projected efficiency, cost budget, the people loading the machine are being paid 0.00 dollars. Works out really good for the Corporation, I guess.
The 15 dollar an hour wage hike has nothing to do with people being replaced by robots. That would have happened regardless of what they were being paid.
It’s just an excuse not to pay people for their labor.
For “burning lines” (you masons know what i mean) this is slower than i am by at least half and i am not a fast mason. It would work for that application only. I would like to see this make “feather joints” or maximum 2 mm thick joints. The temper when humidity changes would be an issue as would having to keep all materials at the same wetness. In perfect conditions this will work well but painfully slowly. I bet it costs more than 2 masons and 4 labourers to rent. Not to mention down time or the fact that you would have to use seriously screened sand with not a single lump in the mortar. How would this handle poorly matched bricks? The whole operation would have to stop and the robot moved for every light, wire or any other than brick install and a human take over. Good slow line burner though.
how about the ties/anchors ?
The wall is supposed to fall over Jeno,
Then the unpaid workers will scrape the used mortar off the bricks, feed them back to the machine and then the wall can fall over again.
I wasn’t going to get into that or the fact that pointing the bricks still requires a human and always will because no mortar is evenly mixed or dries evenly. Like brick paving machines this handles such a narrow aspect of just laying bricks i do not see this going anywhere, yet. When these machines are built to handle real building they will be so expensive and glitchy they will go the way of motorized pointing machines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eCE5clAEdE
that are so slow compared to pointing bags https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MQnpymey8I
that no one but the inexperienced will be interested. Some folks (the lazy) require elaborate tools and aids while others develop the skill that replaces any need for tools. Thereby becoming the ‘tool’ himself. There is no replacement for skill developed over time with patience.