During the Spring COBOD has send out a series of announcements underlining the traction the company has and its’ leading position within 3D construction printing. COBOD has among other announced an order for the biggest mobile 3D construction printer in the world (sold to Saudi Arabia), new distributors, an expansion of the cooperation with German Peri and the delivery of a BOD2 printer of 10*10*10 meter to Belgian Kamp C following their EU tender last year, which COBOD won. Now COBOD is announcing being nominated as Start-up of the Year in 3D Printing Awards in addition to winning the second European tender they have participated in. This time in competition with 3D construction printer suppliers from among others. The Netherlands and France offering robotic arm printers.
Henrik Lund-Nielsen, CEO of COBOD, explained: “With our printers entire buildings can be 3D printed, and not just small single elements. Most customers are interested in doing complete buildings and they are clearly appreciating the much larger prints that can be made with gantry based printers than with robotic arm printers and other non-gantry based systems.”
Jakob Lemming Christensen, Section Manager at DTU confirmed the choice of a gantry based printer and COBOD as the supplier with the following: “It was important to us that we got as versatile and large a printer as possible and we found that in COBOD’s solution”.
COBOD’s BOD2 printer is modular, consisting of a number of modules each of 2,5 meter for the width, length and the height of the printer. DTU chose a BOD2 version 5-4-2 capable of printing an area of 12 meters by 10 meters in 4 meters height. The large print area of the BOD2 chosen was not the only reason why DTU chose COBOD. The BOD2 printer is delivered with the COBOD slicer software, which is a user-friendly operating software, that allows the customers to operate the printer once training has been completed, like the case was for Kamp C after COBOD installed the printer in Belgium here in the spring.
Jakob Lemming Christensen explained: “For DTU, it is key, that the software is easy to understand, such that we can expect that after basic training our students will be capable of running the printer by themselves. Also the possibility to use any type of concrete and mortar on the printer was determining, as we want to experiment a lot with new recipes. We are therefore thrilled that this seems to be the case for the COBOD printer, where the software is open source, which gives both students and staff a lot of possibilities”.
COBOD has been a strong advocate for cooperations with universities, research organisations and materials suppliers to move 3D construction printing forward as there is still much that must be learned. Different from other companies trying to create hype about 3D construction printing, COBOD has openly shared both great achievements, but also challenges faced and what was learned from them. This approach matched the requirements of DTU ideally.
Jakob Lemming Christensen concluded: “For an educational institution it is obviously crucial that the exchange of ideas runs smoothly with the supplier and that the communication is straight forward and open, such that a good collaboration is established. COBOD seems truly interested in the same, so we look forward to an intensive collaboration, where new ideas and concepts will be developed and tested to create new knowledge”.
Due to the accomplishments of COBOD the last year, COBOD has been nominated as Start-up of the Year in the 3D Printing Industry’s Award 2019.
