3D construction printing

COBOD announces distribution agreement with nidus3D

COBOD announces distribution agreement with nidus3D (Ontario, Canada) to bring multifunctional construction robots based on 3D printing to Canada
nidus3D recently built Canada’s first 3D printed multi-unit residential building, fully permitted for occupancy, and North America’s first 3D construction project to use real concrete

3D printing technology has transformed processes in medical, aerospace, and tool-making fields. Now, that same disruption is being brought to the construction sector, and nidus3D is at the forefront, paving the way for new builds to be achieved faster, more affordably, and with less waste, using COBOD technology.

As a testament to their ambitions, nidus3D has recently succeeded 3D printing Canada’s first multi-unit structure in real concrete using COBOD’s BOD2, the world’s best-selling 3D construction printer. The project is a first-of-its-kind consisting of four units each measuring 560 ft2 and is the first 3D printed home to obtain permission for occupancy in Canada. The 3D printed homes are expected to be available by Summer 2022 for individuals and couples seeking attainable housing.

“The opportunity to work with COBOD, world leader in 3DCP is incredible,” said Ian Arthur, President in nidus3D. “The BOD2 printer is an industry-leading construction printer that outstrips competitors in its versatility, scope, and durability. nidus3D is actively deploying 3D construction printing technology to lower building costs and expand access to resilient, efficient, and sustainable housing while complying with Canadian building standards.”

Commenting on signing nidus3D as a distributor, Philip Lund-Nielsen, Co-Founder & Head of Americas at COBOD International said, “We are proud to be partnering with nidus3D to bring our state-of-the-art 3D construction printing technology to Canada, further solidifying our position as the #1 supplier in North America. With their recent project, nidus3D successfully demonstrates how our technology can be applied to build faster, better, and cheaper as our partners learn to master the 3D printing technology. ”

Nidus3D reports to have multiple residential and non-residential buildings lined up for 2022 and 2023, these are subject to announcement at a later stage.

nidus3D used COBOD technology for their first 3D printed multi-unit residential building fully permitted for occupancy in Canada. Finished units will be provided to the market as long-term affordable rentals. The 3D printed homes are expected to be available by Summer 2022 for individuals and couples seeking attainable housing.

About nidus3D

nidus3D is a strategic partner and distributor of COBOD BOD2 printers based out of Kingston, Ontario. With experience in construction, lean manufacturing, and public affairs, the team at nidus3D is actively deploying 3DCP (3D Construction Printing) technology to lower building costs and increase access to housing that is resilient, efficient, and sustainable, all while complying with Canadian building standards. Visit nidus3D.com for more information.

About COBOD International

COBOD is the World’s leading supplier of 3D printers for the construction industry, with strategic investors GE Renewable Energy (USA) and PERI (Germany). COBOD’s mission is to disrupt the global construction industry through world-class multifunctional construction robots based on 3D printing systems. Faster. Better. Cheaper. The company 3D printed Europe’s first building in 2017. Subsequently the first 2- and 3-story buildings in Belgium and Germany were made with COBOD technology. The first villa in Dubai and the first buildings in Africa have also been done by COBOD 3D construction printers, like the first wind turbine bases.

COBOD has an open-source strategy, partnering with customers, academic institutions, and suppliers around the world. Its partners include GE (USA), CEMEX (Mexico), PERI (Germany), Holcim (Switzerland), Dar Al Arkan (Saudi Arabia), L&T Construction (India), and JGC (Japan). COBOD’s vision is to see buildings and concrete structures in every city around the world made by multifunctional construction robots. COBOD is headquartered in Denmark, employs of 90+ highly competent colleagues from 25 nationalities, and has a truly global presence in North- and Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific.

Largest 3D printed building in Africa

Power2Build finished their second and largest 3D printed building yet in Angola with the BOD2 construction printer.
140 m2 house printed 4,5 times faster than the first 3D printed building Power2Build made.
D.fab concrete solution from COBOD International and CEMEX enabling cost-saving up to 90% – first shown in Angola, now spread all over the world.
COBOD completely dominates the 3D construction printing market in Africa with the six 3D printed buildings, all done with COBOD technology.

Power2build have recently finished their largest 3D printed building with a COBOD BOD2 construction printer in Angola. The company has set out to transform the housing market and are pioneers aiming to solve affordable housing in Angola with 3D printed buildings.

The house is the second 3D printed residential building in Angola. It is a 140 m2 house that holds a suite, two bedrooms, three bathrooms, a dining room, and a living room. As the three bathrooms indicate, this is not a social housing project, but rather a house showcasing the design and architectural possibilities of 3D printed buildings.

Power2build is working with COBOD’s 3D printing technology to significantly reduce the housing shortage in Angola. The 3D printing technology is an innovative method that allows construction of affordable and high-quality housing in the region in a faster and more competitive way.

Power2Build printed Angola’s first 3D printed building – a 53 m2 house. This was an incredible milestone, marking the beginning of a revolution, as the house was the world’s first 3D printed house in real concrete (defined by particle size above 8 mm).

While the first house was printed in 48 hours, the second house with 140 m2 was printed in 30 hours. This equates to a 4,5 times improvement in productivity. In addition to this, the team was able to both do the printing, and the water and electrical installations at the same time.

Ricardo Almeida, CEO from Power2Build said: “We are very proud of our progress; people were questioning if we couldn’t print bigger. We have now printed a 2,6 times bigger house and in about 2/3 of the time compared to the first house. We improved the speed of execution remarkably, but still believe there is room for improvement. In the future we will only become better at mastering this technology. We are getting more efficient by the day and closer to achieving our vision to deliver better housing at affordable prices to Angolan families.”

Angola was the first country in the world that printed with the D.fab solution from COBOD International and CEMEX, making printing of real concrete possible. The solution has since been used in projects in a.o. Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Ireland and Canada.

The 3D printed house was done with the D.fab material solution, a ground-breaking additive mix developed by COBOD and CEMEX, that enables printing with real concrete, leading to cost-savings of up to 90% compared to printing with mortars. D.fab enables the usage of 99% locally available materials and only 1% Magic Mix supplied by COBOD. 3D printing with real concrete is a genuine step change in the industry of 3D construction printing and serves as a prominent gateway to properly commercializing the technology.

Commenting on the successful build of the house, Henrik Lund-Nielsen, Founder & General Manager of COBOD International said: “We are proud to have made the technology for this project. Power2Build have increased their speed of execution tremendously compared to their first and now second project. This is a great example of how we and our customers are continuously improving the technology and can build faster, better, and cheaper as our customers and partners become experts at mastering the 3D printing technology.”

COBOD International’s 3D construction printing technology is dominating the market in Africa, which so far has six 3D printed buildings all done with COBOD technology. The company was the first (and only) to print in Malawi, Madagascar, Kenya, and Angola, two of which are schools and four residentials. Later this year COBOD’s customer 14trees will begin printing a double-digit number of houses in Kilifi in Kenya.

In the front: the second and larger 3d printed building 3D printed 4,5 times faster compared to the yellow building in the background, which was Power2Build’s first 3D printed house. Image courtesy: Power2Build

World leader in 3D construction printing solutions with +50 printers sold world-wide.

COBOD’s mission is to build smarter through multifunctional construction robots based on 3D printing technology and COBOD’s vision is to automate minimum 50% of construction processes on building sites. All leading to better, faster, cheaper and more sustainable construction than conventional concrete. We constantly strive to reduce the co2 footprint of 3D printed concrete.

COBOD’s 3D printers made Europe’s first building in 2017. Subsequently our printers made the first 2- and 3-story buildings in Europe (Belgium & Germany), North America (US & Canada) and India. Also, the first 3D printed villa in Dubai and buildings in Africa have been done by COBOD 3D construction printers, just like the first wind turbine bases.

COBOD has an open-source material strategy, partnering with customers, academic institutions, and suppliers around the world.

COBOD is privately owned by General Electric, CEMEX, Holcim and PERI as key shareholders, and our partners further include Dar Al Arkan (Saudi Arabia), L&T Construction (India), JGC (Japan), Siam Cement (Thailand) and Orascom (Egypt).

COBOD is headquartered in Denmark with regional offices and competence centers in Florida and Malaysia. Our team consists of +100 passionate pioneers from 25 nationalities and through our installed base of printers, we have a truly global presence in North- and Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific.

Video of Power2Build house: https://youtu.be/zRKVQ6SNLlI

Construction 3D printing is waiting for a breakthrough The first construction projects using this technology appeared only in 2014.

We are talking, first of all, about the so-called small architectural forms (benches, flower beds, fences). They never even dreamed about building houses. But already in 2015, the Russian startup Apis Cor made a splash - it printed a whole house in the Moscow region. Since then, news about new 3D printed houses has periodically appeared. However, despite the fact that the technology proved to be very promising in terms of the speed of construction of housing and the reduction in the cost of construction, no mass implementation followed.

Construction is the world's number one market. And, if many technological innovations are being introduced in the field of high-rise construction, then little has changed in the field of low-rise construction over the past decades. The last 30 years have seen the availability of the Internet, mobile phones, mobile internet, robotics taken to a new level, etc., but when you get to a house construction site, you are unlikely to find many technological innovations. Automation is practically non-existent, and manual labor prevails. 2020 was a test of strength for the whole world, and also led to the highest level of inflation, which, first of all, hit the construction market, there was a dramatic change in prices for metals, cement, wood and much more.

This Internet meme shows what happened to the cost of building materials in just a year. And the process is still going on. At the same time, there is a serious rise in the cost of labor, and there is an acute shortage of it. All this leads to a sharp rise in the cost of building houses. No matter how strange it may sound, statistics show that the growth of automation does not occur when everything is fine, but precisely in crisis situations, during increased competition, reduced demand and the need to urgently look for new technologies to increase production efficiency. So it happened this time, and after some stagnation, construction 3D printing received a new impetus for development.

Preparing to write an article, I turned to the founder of Arkon - Boris Kozlov y. Arkon was established in 2020 and is engaged in the production of construction 3D printers, both a workshop type for creating prefabs (prefabricated houses) and a portal one capable of printing a two-story house. I asked Boris the key, in my opinion, question:

- Construction 3D printing appeared in 2014, but no mass introduction of this technology followed in 7-8 years. Why do you think this happened, and why is there a surge of new projects right now?

- It seems to me that the reason is the snowball effect. The technology had to mature, grow from a hypothesis to a pilot implementation, and finally to commercialization and scaling (what is happening now). In addition, it should be borne in mind that construction is one of the most conservative industries, where, unlike even aviation and the automotive industry, there is still an extremely low introduction of digital solutions and automation in the field of the production process itself - the construction itself. The issue of regulation and certification also plays an important role - this process is long and creates an additional lag.

In 2014-2016 the first samples of building 3D printers and prototypes of printed buildings appeared. The concepts of various form factors of construction 3D printers and types of printing materials were tested.

In 2017-2018 in the world, the first notable investments were made in a number of construction 3D printing start-ups. Further, by 2020, these investments "rolled" in the form of reaching a certain level of technology maturity - the first commercial products (3D printers and houses) appeared.

Finally, in 2020-2022 it became clear that the hypotheses of the effectiveness of construction 3D printing were justified (cheaper, faster, more environmentally friendly), and large investments began in the industry. A striking example is the investment of GE (the French division of General Electric) in the Danish COBOD or the achievement of a capitalization of $ 2 billion by the American company ICON.

In 2022-2023 over 1,000 buildings will be printed worldwide already, scaling from single buildings/pilot projects to entire villages and major infrastructure/reinforced concrete implementations. In addition, in a number of countries, by now, a regulatory framework has been created or is being actively created for the introduction of additive technologies in the construction industry.

Thus, I believe that the specified time period is a fairly natural cycle of technology development, which is likely to experience exponential growth in the next decade.

According to ResearchAndMarket report, the global construction 3D printing market is valued at USD 354.3 million in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 11068.1 million by 2027, growing by 99.04%.

Various market processes affect the prices and behavior of participants in the global 3D construction printing market. They create price signals that are the result of changes in the demand and supply curves for a product or service. They can be associated with both macroeconomic and microeconomic factors. Even human emotions can also drive decisions, influence the market, and create price signals.

Now let's take a quick look at what the construction 3D printer is. Without delving too deeply into the technology, we can say that construction 3D printers are very similar to classic FDM/FFF printers that print with plastic, but instead of plastic, the material here is a cement mixture, which is fed directly into the nozzle and forms an object by layer-by-layer overlay. Printers are also portal, on the basis of a flying boom, with a robotic arm.

Pictured left is a construction printer based on a boom. The figure on the right is a gantry construction 3D printer

In the figure above, a construction 3D printer in the form of a robot arm installed on a mobile platform.

Everything changed completely when, in the summer of 2021, the American company ICON, which was trying to introduce 3D printing into the construction of various auxiliary facilities, signed a contract with one of the largest American developers, Lennar, to build a village of 100 houses in Texas and immediately became a unicorn , having received 200 million dollars of investments from several investment funds.

Pictured is a 3D printed house in Austin, Texas. A 3D printed house in Austin, Texas.

At the same time, the Danish company COBOD, created by the world's largest construction formwork company PERRI, began selling its gantry 3D construction printers and participating in construction projects around the world. In the photo below, a modern two-story house built in Germany and a school building in Malawi, built in record time with a minimal budget.

Few things unite developed, developing and poor countries, everywhere their problems and tasks, but Affordable housing shortage is a global agenda . If in poor countries there is an acute problem with the increase in the number of homeless people due to a lack of housing, as such, then in developing countries it is necessary to dramatically accelerate the number of new housing being built to meet the needs of a growing population. In developed countries, the problem is primarily in the cost of housing, which has risen in price to such an extent that it has become practically inaccessible to young people. And with the simultaneous increase in life expectancy in these countries, this problem is only getting worse.

At the same time, the trend towards "green agenda " is developing, reducing CO2 emissions, building with more environmentally friendly materials, etc. But, unfortunately, so far the construction industry is the absolute leader in CO2 emissions, as well as in the amount of garbage that each construction site leaves behind. This is not to say that construction 3D printing solves all these problems, but at least it is moving in the right direction. Let's look at this with a few illustrative examples.

3D printed walls.

Today, when we talk about 3D printing houses, we are talking about printing walls. Everything else (foundation, windows, doors, ceilings and roof) is done in the traditional way. 3D printed walls are built as fixed formwork, which significantly saves the amount of cement used , and this, in turn, reduces the cost of construction and reduces the environmental impact of cement production. In addition, with this method of construction, no additional waste is produced, the strength of the structure does not suffer. It can be reinforced, as shown in the photo on the left, and engineering communications can be immediately laid, as shown in the photo on the right, which also affects the final speed of the construction of the object. At the same time, the total weight of the structure is reduced, the remaining cavities can be filled with lightweight foam concrete, insulation, straw or any other available material. Such a lightweight design can use a lighter foundation. The construction method itself is more economical in terms of material, and therefore environmentally friendly.

Eco-concrete with the addition of polymers is being actively developed, the production of which reduces CO2 emissions from 30% to 100%. The Apis Cor company mentioned at the beginning of the article, which built a house in the suburbs in 2015, is now based in hot Florida, plans to start using this material in its projects.

Another startup from Russia, Mighty Buildings, headquartered in California, initially relied on a polymer with the addition of mineral chips. And while the company doesn't build entire homes, it only makes wall panels, it has won numerous design awards, as well as a $400 million valuation in several investment rounds.

As a result, with a rough calculation, we can say that the total savings on the construction of walls can reach 30%, and the total cost of the house can be reduced by 10%. This is true for houses designed for conventional construction. And if you initially design with 3D printing, you can improve this ratio by optimizing the laying of communications, the ability to immediately print interior walls, bookmark niches for bathrooms, fireplaces, built-in wardrobes and kitchens, as was done in the house built by COBOD in Germany.

"There are spots on the sun." Despite all the advantages of construction 3D printing, has several significant disadvantages of . The main one is layering, which cannot be avoided at the current level of technology development.

The photo above shows the layering of the 3D printed walls.

This task can be worked in several directions:

Ribbed walls can be plastered, painted and played with as a design element. That's how ICON does it in the US, for example their latest project House Zero is done that way and has won a number of design awards.

3D printed House Zero in the USA, built by ICON.

Use special "shutters" on the print head that allow smooth layers, as COBOD and other manufacturers do. The photo below shows that this does not ensure the complete absence of layering.

Fully sand the surface to get the usual smooth wall for plastering, painting, wallpapering or other finishing. It is possible, but it will require huge labor costs, which can reduce the overall efficiency of using 3D printing.

Pictured above is a 3D printed wall sanded smooth.

The second problem is the required temperature. Ideally, printing should take place at temperatures between +5C° and +30C°. Humidity is also important. Using additives, you can push these boundaries, but not indefinitely. At strong sub-zero temperatures, printing will be possible in the field only if the construction site is covered with a dome and the required temperature is reached inside with the help of heat guns. In conditions of intense heat, it is preferable to print at night. Another solution could be to print the wall panels in the shop and assemble them on site. Of course, each of these decisions will have a negative impact on the economic efficiency of the project.

Building 3D printing can be useful not only for the construction of houses . With its help, you can solve many other problems, and there its disadvantages will not matter. For example, the American concern GE uses COBOD printers to build towers for wind turbines in the shop. Ribbed surface and temperature restrictions in this case do not play any role. Construction takes place in the shop, after which the object is transported to the installation site.

3D printed wind tower. 3D printed wind tower.

Construction 3D printing, or, as it is also called, additive construction, has just appeared, and I want to believe in its bright future. There are many prerequisites for this, but a lot still needs to be done for success. First of all, it is necessary to develop principles for designing houses for building 3D printing. Then it is necessary to attract top architects to create landmark projects, which can be followed by the mass introduction of a new and very promising technology. Construction 3D printing could help solve the global housing shortage and bring more automation to other areas of construction.

Alexander Kornveits

Expert in the field of additive technologies and 3D printing, head of Tsvetnoy Mir company

3D concrete printing, building 3D printing, house printing

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Roman Pavlenko, 3d4art company in December 20, completed an order for printing a complex house. Form with large overhangs, never before has anything like this been printed by anyone in the world of . The quality is excellent. For the customer, each block, and there are one and a half hundred of them, was coated with concrete varnish and packed to avoid chipping. None of the blocks were damaged in transit. Amazing geometric accuracy . We - equipment manufacturers are delighted with the work of Roman and his team. Thank you, you are not ashamed to send customers with orders for any printing.

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