Chinese company builds 10 houses in 24 hours

The claims sound far-fetched, but the company assures that its custom printing process is more than up to the task of churning out accommodation at breathtaking speed. The homes were only one-storey tall but the stand-alone properties were all the work of four printers, 10 by 6.6 metres, that use automated sprays to emit a unique type of cement in multiple directions at once, construction walls one layer at a time.

The recipe of the quick-drying material is a closely guarded secret, reports China View. While the results are lightning fast, it was not developed overnight: it took 12 years for Ma Yihe, the inventor of the printers, to reach this point.

Now, though, Ma is confident that they have an answer for the serious shortage of housing around the world. Indeed, it might also help with the environment: the process, Ma assures, is greener than traditional construction.

"To obtain natural stone, we have to employ miners, dig up blocks of stone and saw them into pieces. This badly damages the environment," he told the news agency.

"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."

The experimental buildings will be used as the company's offices and join a growing number of 3D printing projects around the globe. In Amsterdam, work began on the world's first 3D-printed house in March 2014, a 13-room building located next to a canal. While theirs may be bigger, Ma's is far more affordable, with each house able to printed for just a few thousand pounds. Dot matrix has never seemed so out of date.
 
For him, the sky is the limit - literally. He says he hopes the company will print skyscrapers one day. At the moment, though, there are no building standards in place for 3D printing. Nonetheless, the printers are fully capable of multi-storey structures. If he can make 10 houses in one day, imagine what he will be able to do in a year's time.