EUROPE’S LARGEST 3D-PRINTED BUILDING
German construction company Kraus Gruppe is using a 3D printer to construct Europe’s largest 3D-printed building in the city of Heidelberg.
The construction firm is using Cobod’s BOD2 printer. The machine will print walls for the building, which is almost 600 sq m in area (6600 sq ft), 54m (162 ft) long, 11m (121 ft) wide and 9m (30 ft) high.
The building will become a ‘server hotel’ for data centre provider Heidelberg IT Management.
Formwork and scaffolding specialist Peri’s 3D construction arm will provide the know-how for the construction, which involves using 200 cubic metres of pumpable concrete.
The high-speed BOD2 printer can print 4 sq m of building per hour and the entire process of printing the walls of the building is expected to take 140 hours in total. Because of the size of the building, the printer will have to be moved several times during the process.
Without 3D printing, the unusual design of the walls would have required bespoke formwork, which Cobod said would have made the project “incredibly expensive.”