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April 26, 2014

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3D prints of 10 houses done in day

A PRIVATE company in east China recently used a giant printer set to print out 10 full-sized houses in a day.

The stand-alone one-story houses in the Shanghai Hi-Tech Industrial Park look just like ordinary buildings. They were created using an intelligent printing array in neighboring city of Suzhou.

The array consists of four printers that are 10 meters wide and 6.6 meters high and use multi-directional automated sprays. The sprays emit a combination of cement and construction waste that is used to print building walls layer-by-layer.

Ma Yihe, the inventor of the printers, said he and his team are especially proud of their core technology of quick-drying cement. This technology allows the printed material to dry rapidly.

“To obtain natural stone, we have to employ miners, dig up blocks of stone and saw them into pieces. This badly damages the environment,” Ma said. “But with the 3D printing, we recycle mine tailings into usable materials. And we can print building with any digital design our customers bring us. It's fast and cheap.”




 

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