contractors

Perfect for plumbers, DIYers or other tradesmen, Olympia’s WD180 is a mini lantern with many versatile features and can be taken almost anywhere. In addition to sitting upright, you can kick out its feet to angle the light or use the built-in D-ring to hang it. The magnetic base makes it convenient for mounting on any metal surface.

With 180 lumens, this mini lantern can light up sink cabinets or other work areas. It is rechargeable with a built-in micro-USB charging port and has multiple brightness settings. It is available for purchase at www.olympiaproducts.com for $29.99.

A big glass vase and a $5,000 check were given to Harley Perry of Bonita, CA on Oct. 2, upon receiving the national John Eberhardt Plumbing Contractor of Year Award from the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association (PHCC) and Delta Faucet Company. Perry owns and operates Perry Plumbing Heating & Air, which he started in 1977. The family-run business provides a full range of plumbing, heating and air services to both residential and commercial clients throughout San Diego County while offering eco-friendly solutions for repairing systems without negatively impacting the environment.

Perry is also president of the PHCC Academy of San Diego, a federally certified school launched in 2009 that offers two and four-year programs for apprentices and journeymen. He is also a longtime active member, board member and former president of PHCC’s San Diego chapter.

The award, named after Delta Faucet’s late senior vice president of sales and marketing, is given annually to one recipient from a national pool of nominees. Perry received the honors on Oct. 2 during a well-attended awards ceremony held during this year’s weeklong conference of the national PHCC at the Diplomat Resort and Spa in Hollywood, Florida. “I was completely surprised to have received this top honor in the nation,” says Perry. “The award hasn’t found a permanent spot yet, but it will be put somewhere in our office.” Danielle Dorsey, executive director of PHCC San Diego says the award is well-deserved. “Harley is very devoted to the success of the plumbing industry.

Knowing that the present, older generation of plumbing technicians is on the verge of retirement, his goal is to support multi-faceted students who can articulate core academic knowledge with the latest technical know-how to become qualified plumbers.”

To arrange interviews with Harley Perry regarding the PHCC Academy of San Diego, cost-saving conservation tips or general plumbing matters, call 619-925-3794. Or to learn more about Perry Plumbing Heating & Air, visit www.perryplumbing.com.

Invoice2go, the App Store’s No. 1 mobile invoicing app, today announced the launch of its mobile payments feature, powered by Stripe Connect. Small businesses and freelancers who previously had to wait for cash or checks can now accept credit and debit card payments immediately through Invoice2go, giving their customers more ways to pay and helping them get paid faster.

The new offering is unique in that it brings the entire billing process seamlessly into one app, a game-changer for every U.S. business owner who has spent countless hours manually invoicing, collecting payment, and reconciling their accounts to keep cash flow in order.

Invoice2go has also hit a new milestone, with customers invoicing more than $1 billion per month, positioning the company to make an immediate impact on the more than 200,000 users who already trust the app to send their invoices.

As part of today’s announcement, Invoice2go has raised $15 million in Series C funding. The additional financing enables the company to aggressively widen its footprint in the Fintech space with the development of new features to fuel small business growth even further. The funding follows two previous rounds totaling $35 million, which closed in 2014.

The Series C financing was led by existing investors Ribbit Capital, who specialize in disruptive financial technology companies, and included Accel Partners, who have a track record of building startups into lasting category defining companies.

Micky Malka, founder of Ribbit Capital, said: “Businesses are interacting more and more through Invoice2go and we’ve been thrilled to be a part of it over the last year. We’ve now significantly increased our ownership through the Series C financing to further support what we believe is one of the most exciting financial software companies today.”

Invoice2go is trusted by business owners across all industries, from plumbers to personal trainers and creative freelancers. The app minimizes administrative work, with customers saving three hours per week on average, and helps users get paid seven days faster.

“No longer do America’s smallest business owners need to wait for a check in the mail. The ability to accept credit and debit card in a seamless way levels the playing field. They can meet the demand of their customers in today’s digital age, and improve their cash flow by getting paid faster,” said Invoice2go CEO Greg Waldorf. “There are more than 100 million small businesses around the world and we see opportunity for every one of them to operate more efficiently with simple technology designed specifically for them.”

“We’re thrilled to see Invoice2go begin offering credit and debit card transactions using Stripe Connect,” said Cristina Cordova, head of business development at Stripe. “Invoice2go is at the forefront of mobile invoicing, and today’s integration will make it easier than ever for their small business customers to get paid.”

According to a 2014 report from the Federal Reserve System’s Cash Product Office (CPO) on consumer payment choices, debit and credit card are by far people’s favorite way to make a payment, with 43 percent preferring debit card and 22 percent preferring credit card. Thirty percent prefer to pay with cash, and only three percent prefer checks.

A California-based video production freelancer, who had early access to the feature as part of a beta group, commented: “Now that I’m offering more payment options through Invoice2go, I’ve seen customers pay their invoices in as little as three or four days. This is a big cash flow improvement for me, and a better overall experience for my clients. It also eliminates the challenges I faced with checks, as most people expect 30 day payment terms, then wait 29 days and 23 hours to send the check.”

Invoice2go’s new in-app payment offering is available now. Download Invoice2go via the Apple iTunes store or via Google Play.

Imagine robot sprayers guided by 3D “printing” instructions constructing the shell of a house, store, apartment building or office could in just one day without an on-site workforce. It’s already happening on an experimental basis in China, and could one day transform the U.S. market as well.

“This technique allows you to construct strong buildings more quickly at a much lower cost and with great architectural flexibility,” said Behrokh “Berok” Khoshnevis, an industrial engineering professor at the University of Southern California’s Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering in Los Angeles, “Because less labor is required, the construction is much safer for the field workforce.” To bring the 3D printing process into the private sector, Khoshnevis launched Contour Crafting, and plans to build a demonstration home in the near future using robots that spray layer after layer of concrete material in a precisely controlled pattern.

While Khoshnevis knows it will take time for this innovative process to catch on, he believes it can eventually transform the market – particularly for the affordable housing market. “Most people will continue to build with wood, steel and glass, butt there is a real need for this technology,” he said in an interview with Perspective Media. “We plan to license this technology, which can bring affordable housing to communities around the world.”

How it works

At the 2013 “Inside 3D Printing” conference in San Jose, Khoshnevis explained how Contour Crafting has addressed the challenges facing large-scale layered fabrication technology. Once the 3D design for a home or other structure has been completed, it needs to be “printed” in the real world environment.To do so, a 3D printer weighing 500 pounds could be mounted on a gantry frame and brought to a construction site. It could also be placed on rails to move back and forth on a street, constructing multiple houses in sequence. Then, one or more robotic “arms” would move around the construction site, spraying concrete or a similar material – pumped from a truck – according to the printer’s 3D instructions. The robotic machines would gradually move higher on the walls and eventually to the roof of the structure as the layers of material accumulate.

One of the biggest challenges to the process was creating a mechanism that could extrude wet cement with a special hardener so it would keep its form as each successive layer is printed. “With this process, it’s possible to construct a 2,000-square-foot house, including the floors, walls and roof, in less than 20 hours,” Khoshnevis said at the conference.

Integrating functional components

One of the big questions for the building trades is how functional components like plumbing, heating, HVAC and electrical systems can be integrated into a 3D printing system. Here are several examples of the process.

• HVAC. Basically, the robot sprayer would create a solid housing for the heating, ventilation or central air-conditioning systems, which would then be installed by contractors in those trades.
• Plumbing. Khoshnevis says the Contour Crafting process has the potential to build utility conduits within walls. “This makes plumbing automation possible,” he added.

After fabrication of a certain number of wall layers, a segment of copper (or other material) pipe may be attached onto the lower segment already installed inside the conduit. The robotics system delivers the new pipe segment and has a heater element in the form of a ring. The inside (or outside) rim of each pipe segment may be pretreated with a layer of solder. The heater ring heats the connection area, melts the solder, and once the alignment is made, bonds the two pipe segments. “PVC plumbing is also possible by using adhesives for pipe connections,” he said.

• Electrical. A modular approach similar to industrial bus-bars may be used for automating electrical and communication line wiring. The modules have conductive segments for power and communication lines, and interconnect modularly. All modules may be robotically fed and connected.

“A simple robotic gripper on manipulator attached to a Contour Crafting machine can perform the task of grabbing the component and connecting it to the component already placed within the conduit,” Khoshnevis said. “The automated construction system properly positions these modules behind the corresponding openings on the walls. The only manual part of the process is inserting fixtures into the automatically constructed network.”

• Sensors. Sensors and other devices can be implanted in certain segments of the building. “Discrete sensors may also be densely placed by a robotic arm at pre-specified locations inside any type of construction material for in-process feedback for construction process control,” he said. They also provide means for inspection and tracking variables such as temperature, humidity and vibration in completed structures.”
• Insulation.   Insulation as well as finish work, such as plastering of walls may be achieved by using a hybrid Contour Crafting nozzle that delivers multiple materials such as concrete, polyurethane, and plaster. After the walls are constructed, a conventional spray painting robotic manipulator driven by the same 3D instructions may paint each room according to desired specifications. “The painting mechanism may be a simple spray nozzle, or a large inkjet printer, making it possible to print wall paper or other desired patterns,” Khoshnevis said.
• Tiling. Tiling of floors and walls may be automated by robotically delivering and spreading grout and adhesives to the flooring. Another robotics arm would pick the tiles from a stack and accurately place them over the area treated with the adhesive material. “Often 60 percent of the time in manual tiling could be spent on alignment,” Khoshnevis said. “With an accurate robotic infrastructure in place alignment will not be an issue at all.”

Benefits of 3D printing

First developed more than 25 years ago, the 3D printing process involves creating solid objects from digital files using thin layers of plastics or other quick-drying substances like concrete. Layer after layer of material is laid down automatically, until the entire object is created.

“With this process, a single house or a neighborhood of home, each with a different design, could be automatically constructed in a single run,” Khoshnevis said. “The potential applications of this technology are include low-income and commercial housing.”

While it takes six to nine months to construct an average house in the U.S., Contour Crafting can complete custom-designed houses in a single day. “Worldwide, we will offer dignified but affordable housing constructed for low income populations,” he said. “We can also create comfortable and livable emergency shelters (not tents) for long-term usage by disaster victims.”

Khoshnevis says other benefits of the 3D printing process include a steep reduction in building wastes and harmful emissions during the construction process.

One of the advantages to Contour Construction’s approach is the ability to offer curvilinear architectural designs rather than traditional rectangular boxes, Khoshnevis added. “These new designs can give a fresh appearance to neighborhoods and cities.”

Looking to the future, Khoshnevis said 3D printers and automated robots could be used to construct livable habitats on the moon and Mars, which are targeted for human colonization before the end of the 21st century. In fact, Contour Crafting beat more than 1,000 other companies around the world to win the grand prize in NASA’s 2014 Tech Briefs “Create the Future Design.”

While 3D printing technology still needs to establish itself in the U.S. construction industry, it’s clear that this innovative technology has the potential to change other worlds, as well as the Earth.