Henrik Lund-Nielsen, founder and General Manager of COBOD International joined us to talk about their company’s 3D printing construction technology, and specifically how it might be used in the future to help wind turbines grow taller. GE is in partnership with COBOD, developing the project knowledge to print their own concrete wind turbine bases that can help extend their on-shore turbines.
Watch the YouTube version of this podcast here.
COBOD has partnered with Peri, a company specializing in construction and formwork, and LafargeHolcim, a leader in cement and materials, helping it rapidly improving its technology and print bigger structures, faster. In this talk we discuss the implications of 3D printed concrete in on-shore applications, off-shore applications, how it can help worker conditions, reduce tariffs and import barriers, as well as get younger generations of construction workers interested in the field. Check out COBOD’s YouTube channel for more videos on their 3D printing.
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Transcript: EP50 – 3D Printed Wind Turbine Bases: Are They The Future? with COBOD Founder Henrik Lund-Nielsen
Dan Blewett: This episode is brought to you by weather guard lightning tech at weather guard, we make wind turbine lightning protection easy. If you’re a wind farm operator, stop settling for damaged turbine blades and constant downtime. Get your uptime back with our StrikeTape lightning protection system. Learn more in today’s show notes or visit weatherguardwind.com/strike tape.
Welcome back I’m Allen Hall. I’m Dan Blewett. And this is the uptime podcast where we talk about wind energy engineering, lightning protection, and ways to keep your wind turbines running.
welcome back to the uptime podcast. I’m your cohost, Dan Blewett on today’s show. We have a great guest. Henrik Lund-Nielsen is here. He is the founder and general manager of COBOD International. So let’s first talk about, uh, the company a little bit. So COBOD is a really interesting, uh, it’s a, it’s a disruptive 3d construction printing company.
So they’re creating the technology, the 3d printers themselves to do concrete, 3d printing, which is currently being used for, uh, interest in the general construction sector, building, uh, houses. They built a two story apartment building. Um, so they’re capable of building all sorts of structures. There also, this is one of the big things we’ll talk about today, uh, in the wind industry building a wind turbine basis so they can build a wider base, uh, onsite that is going to allow wind turbines to get significantly taller because they have that wider base.
So that’s currently a bottleneck in the construction process of on shore wind. So. It’s a really interesting solution COBOD as partnering with GE on the, uh, the winter and base project. Uh, they’re also partners with, uh, Lefarge for, which is the largest concrete manufacturer in the world, uh, for their different, um, types of concrete, because it has to be a flowable, um, you know, high strength, like.
There’s a lot of really interesting things that we’ll, we’ll talk about today in the show. Um, a lot of interesting aspects to the concrete material itself. You can’t just take something off the shelf, uh, from your local hardware store and expect that to work. Um, so there’s a lot of high-tech stuff, not just the 3d printer technology itself, but also the materials, like I said, the concrete and the additives to them.
And then, uh, you know, just what different types of projects can, can they complete and the architecture of all those really, really fascinating. All right. So a little bit more about our guest today. Henrik Lund-Nielsen. So he is a graduate of the Copenhagen business school. Also has an MBA from what is now Alliant international university.
He was long-time CEO of Gypsum Recycling International. He’s been a board member of numerous companies, CEO of number of other companies. He’s also the founder of the 3d. Print or a 3d Print Ventures A/S and he’s of course, founder and general manager of COBOD international. So lots of experience managing people in the economic disruption space.
And he’s highly interested in disruptive technologies that can, you know, make the world better and make economic sense on a much bigger scale. So that’s, again, a large piece of the conversation today about how 3d printing. Can just make a lot of projects faster, more economical, and also have a more positive, local impact.
So you can know how you set up a printer in another, another country, train workers, locally use local materials. That’s a big part of this this mission of COBOD. So without further ado, we’re going to jump into our conversation today with Henrik Lund-Nielsen, founder, and general manager of COBOD international.
all right, Henrik. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.
So obviously you’re out in Denmark and I mean, this is, you know, that’s when, when power is essentially in your blood, right.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: That’s true. Most people have a long life, uh, love, uh, with windmills.
Dan Blewett: Well, and you’ve given an interesting childhood story. So you mentioned you have a connection actually a little bit with, uh, the, the CEO of Vestas to grew up together.
Is that right? Well,
Henrik Lund Nielsen: we grew up together and when we turned 18 and I had to write our social thesis assignment in high school. We chose to write about the windmills, uh, and which at that time, you know, we were speaking about almost 40 years ago, uh, was mostly something that was supported by. He’d be movement, uh, you know, uh, yeah, the kind of, uh, the leftovers from the Woodstock period and so on.
And then if you farmers, so definitely a normal conservative industry was dead set against it, but I’ve always loved it. And I think it’s a no brainer that you put something up and then you generate the. Energy RFI resource. It doesn’t cost anything. So from an economic point of view, I think it’s, uh, it’s wonderful.
And yeah, I I’ve been in love with it since I was 18. And David wrote that thesis together with the guy that then my good friend that ended up becoming the CEO of Vestas quite funny also.
Dan Blewett: Yeah. It’s, it’s crazy how you never know where you’re going to go in life and these crazy parallels even decades later.
So yeah, you’re the, uh, one of the founders and you’re the general manager of COBOD. And as you just mentioned, you know, you. This stuff isn’t just for, you know, in the wind industry specifically, it’s not just for hippies anymore. This is a big commercial business, right. And you’re focused heavily on economic improvement and economic disruption.
So can you talk a little bit about how your technology at COBOD is going to disrupt and improve? Uh, not just wind, but it really you’re looking much bigger. The economic footprint that your, your tech can, can provide.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: Well, you can say there are some very heavy logistical constraints when you want to do tall towers, because the talents are so-called Chronicle shape.
That means they have a diameter, which is larger at the base than at the top. And so the, the total you go as, as a minimum, uh, diamond at the top of the total, you go the wider, the base becomes. However in most countries and also in the U S uh, you cannot transport anything that is more than 4.5 meters in diameter.
And that puts a natural limit at the towers, but being a up to 80 meter. So anything that is made in a factory, and it has to be preassembled in a factory and then shipped like that. We’ll run into trouble around the 80 meters. Whereas we all factories on wheel. We can put up a printer anywhere. We take a truck out with a printer.
And then we set it off anywhere and we can print what, 10 meters, wide basis on 12 million year old.
Dan Blewett: Yeah. So let’s talk about that. So obviously, you know, we’ve mentioned, uh, this 3d printing, uh, construction technology back in one of our shows, I think in June. And you know, like you said, the, the solution is helping wind turbines grow taller because now we can do a lot of this, this construction on site.
Um, but can you describe the actual technology itself? So the bod two is your new printer. Um, how does that all work? How does it get set up on a construction site? So have a win, you know, and we’ll get to GE a little bit, cause they’re your big partner, uh, on the wind side right now. Um, but let’s talk about what the technology looks like, right?
Now.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: Okay. But two is our second generation printer. Uh, with our first generation, we 3d printed the first 3d printed building in Europe back in 17, but we were not satisfied with it. So we developed the pontoon that it’s modular built of modules of two and a half meter. Uh, so around eight, eight feet, if you you’re measuring feed.
So, uh, you go in any direction with two and a half meters with a maximum of 15 meters. So 50 feet, uh, and a maximum height right now of 33 feet or 10 meters. Whereas in the links, you can go as long as you like you just add more modules and more C-Axes. Okay.
Dan Blewett: And so for those, those of you out here, this is obviously 3d construction printing, and you’re probably familiar, and this is becoming a much more mainstream, right?
I know, you know, years ago, 3d printing was just little plastic, you know, whether it was a little devices or trinkets or, or construction or not construction pieces, but. It was a very smaller scale thing. It’s been around for a couple of
Henrik Lund Nielsen: decades. The is the principal of the printers is still the same, you know, you move on three axis at the same time, X, Y, and T.
So in the width and the length and night. Yeah.
Dan Blewett: And so
Henrik Lund Nielsen: we’ve made them much, many times bigger than what you’ve seen before. The longest we’ve made so far, so far, plus 27 meters.
Dan Blewett: Yeah. So let’s talk about that progression too. So obviously, you know, there are now tabletop versions of 3d printers. So I could buy one today.
It’d be here, you know, in a couple of days I could print things out of plastic, potentially metal, even, and you identify this long time ago and you said this could be used for construction. We could pump concrete through this 3d printer and maybe build a house, build a school, build a, you know, all sorts of different buildings.
And it has a lot of it. It has a lot of limitations removed, like we said, with the wind turbine basis, but also construction in general. What were some of those other limitations and why did you, why did you see this infant tile? Not in Vitale, but this, this technology is an infancy and say, we could do this on a huge scale for construction.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: Uh, we already made the printers, uh, putting me our printers with the dimension of one to two meter and so on. So in that sense, the step was not that as far as for us, the first print that we made was a approximately seven by seven by seven meters. Um, but th the principle are the same, but what is, what is critical is that you have a material that is first flowable, because then you can transport it in the boxes.
And then once it comes out of the extrusion, the print nozzle, as we call it, it very fast, cures off and becomes hard and at noon. So you need that. Um, let’s say fluid, solid, uh, transition to, to happen quite, quite fast. So in the, and as you were speaking about, you’re doing it with plastics that you, you heat up.
And therefore it becomes global. And then when it dries down, it becomes hard. Same thing with concrete, we found out that the concrete when it’s made is, is fluid it’s global. Uh, but it, it can, it can be made to, to happen pretty quickly. And then you can build with it. So
Dan Blewett: let’s, let’s jump to, so we have a lot to cover today.
You have a such a unique story with, with COBOD and your different partners. Let’s jump to the Lafarge. So they’re the biggest concrete supplier in the world. Tell us a little bit about the concrete, because like you can’t just take anything off the shelf. I’m sure you couldn’t just run down to the local hardware store and say this concrete is going to work in our, in our printer.
No correct.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: Uh, so, so this project that, uh, that we are doing with the GE as the, the, the in customer, if you like, uh, they, that’s a run by three partners in, in a fantastic, uh, I would have to describe it as an excellent collaboration between the partners. So we each have our field. Yeah, I’ll feel obviously it’s a 3d printing technology.
The field of advice is obviously the materials and so on. Um, the, the, like we are undergoing a development with, uh, our technology. Um, up-scaling it and industrializing it, uh, because these windmill towers are, are very tall and they require a lot of concrete. Then at the same time, the pass on their side is, uh, upscaling and upgrading.
Uh, they are concrete. So moving from, let’s say less strong, concrete to more and more strong concrete. And also concretes that are easier to mix to pump, uh, but still can have that ability to, to cure up pretty fast. Uh, this is spatial science and it’s nothing that we could do on our own. And then, so we’re very grateful for that.
Uh, that passion also saw a possibility in this and would join this, uh, uh, giant corporation that, uh, that we have with the.
Dan Blewett: Yeah. And this was one of the questions I had for you before, which is, uh, you know, what, what role does your company have within a construction site using, you know, your 3d printer?
So you aren’t necessarily designing the building. You are, uh, supplying the. Or maybe, or you’re supplying the tools, right. You’re supplying the 3d printer for a company to say, so if I have my construction company, I say, Hey, I want to build a house. You sell me the 3d printer. And then, but maybe we, we cooperate and we develop the different, you know, the, the project so that, okay, here’s the let’s work with Lafarge.
So we have the right concrete, let’s work with other teams. So can you tell me a little bit about that process? Where do you exactly come in to this whole thing? No,
Henrik Lund Nielsen: you’re you’re, you’re entirely correct. We, we, so we are the ticks supplier. So we are a tech company. We are not a construction company, so, uh, you know, you know, Uh, building construction, uh, area of our business.
Uh, we are basically selling 3d construction printers to our customers that are then executing project projects with the help of operators, but we are not doing it actively onsite ourselves. So the role that we play on site normally in a normal construction project is zero. Because we just supply the, just supply, the necessary green dot and then our customers applying in the case of GE it’s a little bit different.
It’s different because this is still very immature and not a lot of people have tried 3d printing emails before. In fact, we are the only one who’s ever done it before. So we are taking the lead role in that, but during this year, there’ll be a transition where other people will actually man, our printers.
So that even the construction of the, the newer prototypes that we are going to do this year, uh, will not be done, uh, by our guys in front. We will be there to supervise, but we will not be the ones that are Manning the printer, et cetera. So we are training local crews in the U S to be able to do these jobs.
Dan Blewett: Oh, that’s interesting. So that, that’s a big change for you. I mean, sort of like, all right. We’ve, we’ve given the tools, we’ve given the training and now. Yeah, no
Henrik Lund Nielsen: riff that first time we did it, which was without first pot, but to printer it back in January 19, um, we were, we were a little bit, uh, Yeah, doubtful of how it would go because it’s brand new technology never been applied before and so on.
And our customer come see it doesn’t have their own, uh, construction workers. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s a kind of R &D uh, innovation center. So they don’t have construction markets. Instead. They took students from the nearby university. Then we train the students, the students trained other students, and these students made.
The the, the first two-story building in Europe. Uh, but by funny, we trade students that treat other students and then they put it. So that sort of proved to us that, Hey, it, even if it seems science fiction and so on, it’s not that hard. I mean, we can basically train anybody that, is it skilled or engineered skilled, uh, to, to, uh, to master, uh, the printer, uh, within a week.
Dan Blewett: Yeah. So before we, we go back to GE, cause there’s like, I have a couple more questions for you about, uh, that, that is a really interesting aspect of it. This is, this is not backbreaking construction, labor, which is a really positive thing. Right. And it’s also really interesting where I’m sure lots of younger people, you know, the millennial generation, they, everyone has, you know, this, they they’re coming up with this tech background.
Right. I didn’t grow up with a. Smartphone. I know you didn’t, but we, uh, these kids do, right. Like, and so they’re coming into this world where they’re a lot more tech savvy from the get go. So, I mean, do you see the worker who, you know, in construction is, is it changing? I mean, this seems like it could really take off where.
Hey, I want to work in construction because this printer is super cool. I’m on the forefront of this new technology. We could do good things with it. We could print really cheap buildings and do good for, you know, small communities and communities that need a new, you know, whatever it is. I mean, I feel like there’s a lot of applications where the human aspect could be really excited about this.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: That’s great. Um, well you asked a lot of questions. I did. I did. I’ll try to provide two answers. Number one, mass to the popularity of, of working with, with tech, like, uh, like, like, like real supplying. Yes, there is. There is no doubt. I mean, if you look at my, my own recruits improvement situation, uh, we, uh, we are Danish by, by birth.
Uh, and still 50%, our employees are Danish, but the other 50% are internationals and we basically. Hire the best we can get. And we get a lot, a lot of applications from the whole world, uh, from young people that just wants to work with this technology. Um, this is very, very different from the construction sector, the construction sector in all the developed countries, us, including the Germany, Denmark, Japan, Korea.
They’re all seeing a shortage of new entries into the construction sector. So in particular, in Japan, for instance, you have a very high percent of the workforce. I think it’s actually 30% of their workforce construction workforce is retiring within 10 years and they can’t get new entrance. So people that wants to do construction work because it’s hard and it’s, it’s not pleasant, the working conditions and you get worn out and all technology solves that.
Because it does, it’s not physically damaging to you or, or, or stressing you in any way. Um, so a lot of our customers also seeing this is a chance to overcome that lack of skilled labor because all the skills are, I am the printer. So that’s the first part of the second part. The answer is the millenniums.
Sure. You know, like my kids, they’ve almost grown up with a, with a, with a tablet and you know what, you can control the, the, the printer with the tablet. So with the it’s, uh, uh, You know, a TIK TOK program you’re controlling your, your laptop or the other printer it’s as easy. It is as easy. The whole thing is made automatically.
Dan Blewett: Yeah. So obviously this iteration of your technology is not the first, right. We talked about there’s different types. So, you know, there’s robotic, uh, the gantry arms. And then there’s your method. Can you talk about the two and why you’ve you’ve chosen? The one that you’re, you’ve settled on.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: Sure, uh, within, uh, concrete printing, there are, there are basically two schools.
One is a robotic arm, a school where you print and fond of yourself. You print fairly small elements, typically maximum four feet in the width and a couple of feet in the depths, then maybe eight feet in the height. And then you piece these elements together. To make an entirety. So to say, uh, whereas our printer, you, you set them up at the, uh, around the entire thing that you want to print.
You say to the once, and then you print the whole thing. There are no connections between parts, et cetera. It’s made in one goal. It was clear to us that if you wanted to move into large construction objects, like buildings, houses, two story, three stories, windmills, et cetera. You the gantry solution would be the robotic arm solution.
Very, very superior where the robotic arm solution is superior is if you have to make very intricate, very, uh, Uh, artistic, uh, smaller single objects, like, uh, uh, a very twisted column or something like that. They are the reporting arm with this list size. It’s more precision because it can move around in six axes where we throw axes.
Um, they are the robotic arm, I think has a relevance. I don’t think it has a relevance in, in making, in title.
Dan Blewett: Gotcha. Gotcha. So I want to jump back to GE here. So obviously I know there’s some things that you can’t talk about, and there’s a lot of really interesting, you know, new tech you know, perhaps under NDA.
Um, but let’s talk a little bit more about just getting this wind turbine base up and tested because I mean, one of the things I think that’s interesting is that, you know, there aren’t 3d printed. There’s not many 3d printed structures out there, right? This is a new it’s on the forefront. So one of the chief questions is.
How do we know it’s not going to fall down, right? I mean, you have a huge wind turbine on top of this base in high winds, there’s lots of stresses and forces. Um, how did you test that out? And what was that process like to say, Hey, this is, this is solid. Obviously,
Henrik Lund Nielsen: this is not only been one test has been multiple tests.
I think an even better guarantee you get is that you get certified as involved, uh, when it comes to the real thing, when it has to be made in the real world application, you get a certifier involved in this case, DNVGL. Um, and they certify that this building method that we are doing with the kind of rebar, the kind of concrete with this, and this document is strengths, et cetera.
That that will be safe to use. So you have, uh, you have the whole certification process, uh, uh, going on. We’ve not reached that stage yet. We’ll get there, but we haven’t reached it yet.
Dan Blewett: Gotcha. And then, I mean, is it a situation where, because again, like, I know we talked a little bit about, um, outside the box and inside the box.
And would you describe what you’re doing? It’s obviously it’s, it’s new technology and it’s really interesting, but it’s, would you describe it as really, really outside the box as far as instruction? Or is it still kind of inside the
Henrik Lund Nielsen: box? It’s disruptive within the box. So to say, because we are disrupting the way you are manufacturing or you using, uh, technologies and methods that are, that have been used before.
So you’re using a concrete material. You’re using a steel cages. S rebar or steel tendencies, Reba. Those are what has always been used in, in concrete towers. Um, and that’s why in that sense, it’s within the box. Uh, you could also go outside of the box and say, well, with this technology, we have completely new solutions for making, for instance, reinforcement solutions that we haven’t seen before.
So we do glass fiber reinforced wire or something like that, uh, which has not been applied before. Uh, and we have apparently the process also looking outside the box, not just inside the box.
Dan Blewett: Gotcha. Okay. That makes sense.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: Boom, make you have a commercial viable product much faster because when you are outside of the box, it’s all new and, uh, uh, you need to test and prove much more goals.
Dan Blewett: Yeah, that makes sense. So let’s talk about speed a little bit. So, you know, say in the future, uh, wind sites going up and they say, Hey, we’ve got 80 turbines and we want to get, like, we need as many 3d printers as we can get to, to get this up, you know, with traditional, uh, manufacturing or construction. You could take months or years, right.
It’s going to take probably a couple of years to get all the construction done. What’s what’s typical. The, uh, the speed increase with, you know, say they had say they had 80 wind turbines. I’ll just go with that number. Is it five? Is it 10 printers? And then it could. hammer them out in a matter of weeks, instead of months and years, I mean, what can they do
Henrik Lund Nielsen: all depending on how much capital costs that you want?
Because obviously, like we spoke about before the printer can be moved from site to site, but within the site, it can also use you to be a little dry. So you will have the printers that you apply. The longer we’ll obviously take, but, but you know, our ambition is, is to, to, to look at making a tower in a week, which is, uh, which is a huge improvement in terms of the, let’s say the, the first 80 meters we will do that.
Uh, our, our ambition is to do that, uh, within a weekend. I can try to put that into perspective. The first time when we did, we did 19 four for the, was it, it was a 10 meter tower. So 33 feet tower, uh, other a hundred tons. They still, even if we did the first prototype, they were skeptical as to good. It basically correct that you could put up a printer and then print a 10 meter tower.
We knew we could because we had been doing other things. Uh, we were a little bit disappointed about the speed. Um, so we predicted that the next time we would have to do the same tower. We could cut it down. From three weeks to three days. Now, in the meantime, then a year’s passing a LA a lot of things were upgraded, made more industrial.
So in terms of pumps and mixers, and then the design changed. So instead of being a hundred tons now 10 meter, it was harder than seventy-five dollars. So 75% more. And either way, we should also remember that we just had to apply while we were printing two in same time, eight tons of reinforcement. Now. We did that.
We did it in three days, three days and four hours. So you can say we did 75% more in one seventh of the time. That’s a 12 time improvement in productivity from one the first time to the second time. So obviously if we did it a third time, we could do it even faster than the first time, even faster and so on.
And that’s why, that’s why we, we, we from COBOD side, at least we were thinking, okay, 80 minutes. There’s do it in a week.
Dan Blewett: Yeah. So three weeks down to three days, what was your first, uh, progression?
Henrik Lund Nielsen: Yeah, probably 75% of the whole material printed. 75% more. Despite the fact he went from three weeks to three days.
Dan Blewett: so let’s talk about the worker aspect of that. So. Obviously a lot of these wind sites, um, and construction projects in general, right? If you’re going to build a couple of houses in a, in a very remote, rural area or up, really high up in the mountains and in a hospitable place, traditionally you’d have to send a big construction team and they might be there for months or years on end.
How would that potentially change with, uh, with 3d printing?
Henrik Lund Nielsen: There’s no doubt for a lot of these sites. Uh, and, and the more the sites are growing in size, the more remote you are getting and when you’re remote, there’s no doubt that the deployment. Off the cruise. It’s a significant, very, very significant you can call them to just tickle cost or whatever you want to call it, deployment costs.
And clearly when you can then can cut down on time with the help of our technology, you can cut down on that per time unit, uh, expensive deployment of the, of the, of the crews. Um, so also in that sense, we will help that help to cut down costs.
Dan Blewett: Yeah. And, and one of the interesting things, um, that I was thinking that’s probably, uh, overlooked quite a bit is if you’re going to do a site in say an in another country, like say it’s in South America, there might be a lot of, you know, so you want to import, you know, a base that’s made a concrete or import a tower.
Does that pose problems doing that importing.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: Yup. Some of the biggest markets in the world, Brazil, India, and so on. They have high import areas for steel. So if there’s no local, uh, steel plant close by. It doesn’t help that you already in morning, we’re still having a steel plant and then you are doing a project at the other end because inland transportation is also extremely costly.
So there might be, you know, a plant somewhere in Mexico and it would be cheaper to ship from there, but the problem is then you’re hit by importer in port cherish. So we also localize. Uh, production. And that means we creating jobs locally with the help of our technology. And that is actually a demand and a lot of these tenders that there is a certain percentage of local content in the execution of the project.
So in that sense, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s good also that you use a local local people and create local jobs instead of importing people from all kinds of places. Of course, you still need to have some experts person involved. That’s coming from abroad, but you can use a large base of local people also.
Dan Blewett: Yeah.
So if you had a project in Brazil, for example, you know, you might have to import all those steel bases, but with a 3d printer, you could say, Hey, we’re going to set up here and we’re going to make it all locally from local aggregate, you know, mix the concrete locally and train the workers locally. And that could probably.
I mean, do you feel like that’s potentially going to allow a lot, not, not only projects faster, but more governments are going to approve these. It’s going to reduce the cost in general,
Henrik Lund Nielsen: for sure. Yes. And don’t think, and then also think about the CO2 friendliness of that as compared to shipping materials or finished products, uh, like distances.
So sorry. Concrete printing is in itself. So you’re too friendly because you, you, you use it resources that are close to your side and you don’t transport it unnecessarily to a factory first, and then you transport the elements and then you use a crane to get the elements in place, et cetera, et cetera.
It’s much more,
Dan Blewett: frankly, that way also. Gotcha. And then, you know, if there’s a lot of concrete casting that had to be done or, you know, you might potentially have to put up a factory in another, in like in a local area, is that right? And this could potentially alleviate that issue as well.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: Yeah. If, if, uh, for certain reasons you cannot make steel, uh, steel towns, uh, then, and you have to make a concrete plant, um, then you’re looking at, uh, 50 million euros.
So 16, 60 million us dollars. To, uh, establish the plant. And what do you then use the plan for afterwards you, in essence, you have the same problem when you build the tunnels and bridges, they guy, and a lot of questions build the factory, you know, next to it in the Harbor, if it’s a tunnel. Right. But what do you then use that factory for afterwards?
Uh, you know, so, so we can move the printer to wherever it’s needed. When you are finished with it in one side, you take it down and you take it to the next side.
Dan Blewett: Gotcha. So if more, um, obviously with GE being, you know, they’re the front runner in this third, your partner at the moment, they’re, they’re trying to get this technology up and running and viable for them.
Um, let me, what barriers will other companies, you know, say some construction company says, Hey, yeah, we want to be involved in this. What are the barriers for them to. Suddenly be competent to say, yeah, we have the skills. We have the resources to build, whether it’s a wind site for their own turbines or whether it’s buildings for their construction company.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: Sure. Mean, if you think about the construction companies, then, then, uh, there are no barriers because I’m sure that he would be, would be happy to work with the, let’s say the most competitive construction companies in that area where they have to do projects. Right? So again, it’s not us, who’s going to be doing it.
We’re going to sell the printers. It’s going to be. Geez. And then do you use going to apply them a global construction companies all over the world? So for the construction companies, they have their innocence. There are no barriers. It’s just in a new way to make the, uh, the tallest, uh, and they don’t have to, to fund all this development, which is founded by, by, by GE, but also by grants.
Uh, among others, there’s a department of energy grant from, from the U S that is a, that is backing this project that we’re having.
Dan Blewett: Okay. Okay. So let’s talk about other applications within, within wind energy. So it’s not just towers, right? I know. Potentially foundations could be maybe on your radar. Um, and what about offshore?
Uh, but let’s start with foundations first.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: Well foundations, uh, you know, we really interesting application because right now I can say. Um, we are looking at, and the way that windows are designed is that two separate pieces. You have the child piece, and then you have the foundation, which is a very wide thing.
So it’s not untypical that while you have the four and a half meter maximum diameter here. When you talk about the foundation is 25 meters. Now what would happen if we sought out the thing as one combined unit and made it as one. You know, what advantages would that be given? And, and, you know, initial calculations are showing that it’s a very, very promising, uh, use of the technology.
Also while we have to, you know, we like to get baby, we’re learning, learning how to run here for at first we have to crawl and probably a balloon to crawl now, and soon we have to start the walking and then after that, we can learn how to run. So we have to take it step by step. And then that also, that also goes for the, for the show, because obviously.
I’ll show it to you to shoot the interesting, eh, application, especially here in Europe. Uh, you know, where we have a lot of, uh, C, but not a lot, not many sites where you can put up a new windmills. That’s very different from the U S where you have these. Uh, Midwest and Texas. And so on, you have these mass mass areas where you can put up a lot, a lot of windmills where you’re not bothering anybody.
That’s much more difficult than Europe. So that’s why all shore is so popular in Europe. Whereas in the us, you don’t have that much coastline relative to your population. So, so the land application is, is more, uh, attractive in the U S which is also why. It’s uh, it’s no wonder that it was that, that, uh, that is spearheading this technology because, uh, the land application is, is so important in the U S.
Dan Blewett: Gotcha. Gotcha. I mean, do you see this potentially being, you know, 3d printers on the coast and just printing things that might have typically been pre-cast and then taken off shore or they might stick? I
Henrik Lund Nielsen: see it everywhere. You know, there’s no into where I could see it. Obviously we have to learn how to do it and we have to overcome some, some barriers.
And there are no, there’s no magic here. It’s hard work and development and, and people that I believe in it and, and, and money and finance to be able to do it. But yes, I can see that happening too. I can even seeing us printing on, on ships, on boats, uh, and then lowering it down and, and so on.
Dan Blewett: Wow. That’s interesting.
So let’s talk about that. You said you knew, you mentioned people believing in it, um, and you have some pretty powerful, big, strong clients, right? I mean, in partners here. So, uh, Lefarge wholesome is one of the biggest, uh, you know, the biggest concrete manufacturer, right. And GE is obviously a huge, uh, wind turbine manufacturer.
Um, but you also had another big one, um, a construction, uh, in home. And the home hardware company really helped. You know, they really believed in me,
Henrik Lund Nielsen: German, the German, the German period group, uh, which is making the, what is known as farm work equipment. If you want to cast concrete on site in the past, you were either doing it with manual.
You, you try to make some, some, some most would the help of, uh, what, uh, or you would buy from work equipment. And Perry is. The leading company globally within the supply of formwork equipment, they very quickly realized that, uh, we also costing onsite in essence. That’s what we’re doing. We’re costing concrete on.
So I can basically the same as, as application. That’s the episode we we’re doing it automatic and they are doing it manual manual solutions. And they predicted very quickly that, wow, this, this, this technology is going to take a large share of the construction market. So it’s better to, uh, to join these guys and to try to beat them.
So Perry came in very early, uh, back in 18, uh, and has been tremendously important for us, uh, both in terms of giving credibility and so on. But it’s, uh, it’s a 2 billion euros, also sales, uh, company, 10 plus 10,000 employees, 80, 80 employee areas. Obviously, they come in with all their know-how and knowledge of the construction industry of concrete and of casting and so on.
And we have been benefited tremendously from that.
Dan Blewett: Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, it seems like that’s always a big part of it. Like you have to have like the early adopters and obviously for like tech and lots of little devices, you know, everyone, you know, there are some people who are the early adopters of a, of an iPhone, right.
You know, like the geeks. Um, but in your case, these are some, these are some big companies that were like, we S we see the same. Um, we have this, we see what, what Henrik sees.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: I, I need to applaud peer group because what they did was they did a, at this rock team arm of their own company said, do we make it disruptive new technologies, disruptive, uh, eh, arm of our own company.
And we, we give them the assignment to go around, out there in the market, find all the technologies that can threaten us. We will be doing now and then we will invest in them, uh, and you know, full family run German company. That’s really, really impressive to have that kind of issue. Uh, so yes, and again, eh, tremendously important for us in terms of credibility, because now it was not just these tech guys from Denmark that knew a lot about 3d printing, but not so much about construction.
It was backed by one of the most important companies within the construction sector, uh, on a global
Dan Blewett: scale. Yeah. And then, yeah, that sort of that hand on your shoulder, that’s like, Hey, we’re gonna, like, we’ve got, you know, all the years and, and the huge team behind Perry group. So basically
Henrik Lund Nielsen: they’re saying to us, tell us what you need and we will, we will help you.
So, so, you know, tremendous support, uh, fantastic. Uh, I would say the same thing goes also fall, fall apart. It’s a little later in the process, but the pass has also been a tremendous partner to work with. And G also, and yes, we are lucky. We do have some tremendous customers. I can mention IL and T construction in India, which is India’s largest construction company with 135,000 employees.
Wow. You know, we have numerous of these companies with 10, 20, 40,000. Uh, employees, um, which, uh, which is backing us and, and, and also pollution, uh, which is of course very satisfying for us
Dan Blewett: as a company. Gotcha. So, uh, I do want to turn back to one more, um, line of questioning in wind energy, which is, uh, distributed when the small wind turbines, um, I mean, do you see this, you know, your printers are, what do they typically, I mean, would they be something accessible to say one, say one, farm, one to put up one small wind turbine.
Is this going to make sense at that scale or is it only going to make sense at a bigger commercial scale?
Henrik Lund Nielsen: No. No. I think it will make sense also there, and there is clearly a development going, uh, and, and obviously we are spearheading that together with GE. To go a toner and bigger also in terms of, of, of the printers.
Right. Um, so I could foresee a certain point that we could do for instance, at 30, 30 meter windmill. And you have markets for that. Uh, I, I’m not too familiar with it in the us, but I know in Europe, uh, there’s a regional market for those kinds of, uh, windmills. Uh, and yes, again, as the deployment of the technology as, as, as fast as it is, uh, you set it up, you print fast, you take it down again fast and then you’re out of it.
Yes, I can definitely see that
Dan Blewett: habit. Gotcha. Yeah. We had a Paul Dawson from EO cycle on the show. Um, a couple episodes back and he was, you know, their company is in distributed wins. So these 25 kilowatt, you know, smaller wind turbines that can power, you know, five to 10 homes or a small business. Um, so yeah, I could see it having applications there, but a 30 meter
Henrik Lund Nielsen: tall, a window can now pile a lot more than that.
Dan Blewett: This is true. This is true. Yeah. I think you said there, um, you and your, you and your meters, the U S needs to just get, we just need to get on. We just get on meters. All right. Well, it’s funny. It’s funny because it, uh, no, I want you to speak in, in, you know, your terms, but it’s funny because you hear the word 30 and you’re like, Oh, that’s not that tall, but 30 meters is pretty darn tall.
I mean, that’s
Henrik Lund Nielsen: not a problem.
Dan Blewett: So, um,
Henrik Lund Nielsen: well, let’s talk about, I have to be very, to national in the way I
Dan Blewett: am so very Imperial metric fluid. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s talk about the future. Uh, obviously you’re still only a couple iterations into your technology. I mean, where do you see, what are some challenges that you’re facing?
Um, where do you, where do you still want to improve and where do you hope to be in a, in a couple of years? Hmm.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: The challenges we are facing is a traditional conservatives in the construction industry. So the construction industry is used to that. They make a product that has to last at least 30 years.
And here on this side of the pond in Europe, we, in essence, we built to last. That means there’s no, there’s no intake for the buildings, et cetera. That’s just the last a hundred, lots of years. And we have lots of buildings like that, uh, both here and the rest of Europe, because of that, then there is, um, And natural, um, tendency to not just launch into any new technology that shows up in any new building visit, because, you know, hang on, let you see that it’s there, you know, a year, two years after, because we have to vouch for our products for so long.
So that tends to grow a natural, uh, conservatism. Uh, again, luckily because of the backing of, of Perry and and similar companies, we over, we overcoming it more and more, I would say, and it’s, they can really see a change here in the last couple of years. That’s one, one, one challenge. Another challenge is, uh, is permitting because all the, uh, billing codes were wrong, uh, was making around, uh, the old fashioned technology.
And now we come with, uh, with a new technology that can do waste Mara in, in a lot of ways, but we aren’t allowed to buy the building code. So quite often we have to start, we have to go around the code and do something a little bit stupid. Just to be able to make the code happy. So, uh, know, I, I would, I would like to see the changes in the building code to it happening faster.
It is ongoing. It has been recognized that this must happen, uh, because this new, uh, technology is dominating more art. It’s not dominating, but it’s becoming more and more. Uh, available and it’s making more and more buildings and so on. Uh, but it’s probably a five to eight year process.
Dan Blewett: Yeah. I didn’t think about that.
Yeah. That’s interesting that the inspectors and just the regulations have to catch up with something that’s very, very new. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: But that’s typical. That’s typical. That is happening also in the, uh, in the aviation industry, where, by the way, do you use also very big with metal metal 3d printing apart?
Yeah. They also have to, you know, do a lot to prove that the, uh, the, the 3d printed metal products were as strong as the cost of a metal pot and so on. So, so regulations are always behind technology. Then it’s never a head of technology. So in terms of where we want to go, uh, obviously we, we are, we want to go faster, wider, taller, and that’s a continuous process.
And, and we, uh, we are very much developing in that direction, but we also want to go deeper in the sense that within the building, why should we limit ourselves to just do what we can extrude? Why can’t our printers. Or maybe we should call them construction, robotics. Why can’t they hold a spray gun? And then we do painting or why can’t we do insulation while we are there?
Anyway. So, so we see this, uh, development, uh, inward. So to say, in terms of doing more and more functionality, uh, to, to build in more non functionality to the printers, and then we see this a taller, wider, faster development. Typically when you take, take technology,
Dan Blewett: Yeah. That’s an interesting idea that not, not only the structure of a new house or, or building, but also as you’re going like, Hey, this is curing let’s like you said, let’s, let’s insulate.
Let’s. Add in some windows let’s start to cause there’s a lot of, you know, there’s so many the order of operations and the, the, you know, the construction checklist is so long. So
Henrik Lund Nielsen: yeah, it’s a miracle complex process. There’s a lot of manual labor involved. So we are looking at the. The processes that requires the most manual labor.
And then we see we are investigating, how could we automate that? Because you know, something that that’s done very quickly is no, no sense in automating, but something which requires a lot of long labor. That makes sense
Dan Blewett: automated. Gotcha. Well, as we wrap up here, I know there’s well, there’s one other thing that you’re passionate about, which is reducing CO2 and helping the planet.
Would you like to speak a little bit about your mission with that?
Henrik Lund Nielsen: I’ve always been, and I know I am green from an economic point of view. I, you know, uh, so it started, it started, obviously you could say with the windmills where you have a free resources of women, let’s get the best out of that, but you can, you can make the powder into waste.
Uh, especially in the U S uh, you might not know it, but you guys are very wasteful and all of your waste more or less ends up in landfills. Uh, here in, in Europe, at least we are pretty good at burning it for energy, but, you know, even, even converting it to energy because you’re burning it. If you think about it, you can take paper and plastic and you put it into an oven.
Wow, why don’t we, you know, recycle it back into paper and plastic. So we don’t have to use new resources. That, that to me economically must be a, a much better, much better plan. Um, so yeah, uh, anything that can help to reduce CO2 and this project that we’re doing and, uh, and he is, it’s definitely also doing that because the taller you go with your windmills.
The more you harvest of the energy. So, so, so the wind up there, so you can, you can use the output from the same. Windmill just by extending it, you can increase the output 20 or 30%. So in essence, from a point of view, it more or less required the same amount of CO2 to make them windmill. But now your output of it is, is increased with 20 and 30%.
Okay. And obviously every time we make more wind energy, we reduce it dependence on fossil fuels. So that’s also from that point of view. Extremely good. Yeah.
Dan Blewett: Well it’s and that’s, that’s an important part of it because I think especially here in the U S you see more and more companies integrating this environmental ism with their corporate mission.
So I think obviously in the gray here, you can’t avoid
Henrik Lund Nielsen: it. It’s about being green and being environmentally friendly and low carbon footprint. You’re dead. So, yeah. At least you have to speak about it, whether you actually do so much about it, it’s maybe another matter for a lot of industries, but, but you, you need to at least show that you care and that you are thinking about it and so on.
Well
Dan Blewett: then as we kind of like double back to the dimension of millennial workers, they’re more than I think probably any other generation. Really driven by purpose. So they don’t want to just work for a construction company and just build a building. They want to build a building. That’s also helping the environment and, you know, meeting some of those environmental goals.
So I think it always continues to tie back into it. Then, you know, the more, you know, you as a, you know, general manager of, of, of a large disruptive, um, Company that’s doing good for the planet and you know, no buts about it. You’re outspoken about it. I think that helps that same recruitment cycle. Like young people want to be involved in things that don’t just earn them a paycheck, but also are giving back to the environment.
They know that when I’m running the printer, I’m helping the planet and I’m doing my part and not just for my family, my paycheck and my financial stability,
Henrik Lund Nielsen: but it’s also a sign of an affluent country or affluent society. The richer. The richer you as a country become, the more you can afford to look at non-financial things.
Uh, whereas, you know, if you are fighting in Africa for your everyday life, then it’s very, very difficult to be too friendly. And unfortunately we see that, see that, uh, there is a lot of damage going on in, in, in Africa and other developing countries, uh, parts of the world, uh, not so developed, uh, where.
Because the whole focus is on, you know, just getting by and making sure you get hot food. And so on that, uh, And we are not applying the best practices that we could. Well,
Dan Blewett: Henry, this has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate your time. I think this is such an interesting technology. I watched all your YouTube videos and, you know, following around the time, lapses are fascinating.
Yeah. So we’ll for sure link to all that stuff in the description below. So you can follow up with COBOD and with their technology, because it really is. It’s fascinating. And it really is a very interesting development and construction, not just for the wind industry, but for the planet. So thank you again for being on the show.
And again, really take your time.
Henrik Lund Nielsen: No problem.
Dan Blewett: Happy to be here. All right, that’s it for our episode of the uptime podcast. I want to thank again, today’s guest Hendrick, Lund-Nielsen from COBOD international. Uh, be sure to check out the description links, whether you’re listening, uh, on, on podcast platforms, such as iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and other, uh, or here on YouTube, uh, be sure to check out the description links below where you can link out and watch some of COBOD’s
pretty amazing videos. Uh, you can check out their company and you can find ways to get in touch with them. If you’d like to obviously, please subscribe to the channel, share the show with a friend. This is a really fascinating episode. So if you know someone who geeks out on, on new technology like this, or is just really passionate about reducing CO2 in the atmosphere, uh, and obviously with.
With green energy, you know, and definitely share the show because like I said, this is something that’s going to be more and more prevalent. It’s really exciting, uh, interesting technology and, uh, yeah, we will hope to see more of it in the future. Thanks again for listening. And we will see you here next time on the uptime wind energy podcast.
