Professional certification Course P1 $250 · open to anyone

COBOD BOD2 Level 1

3D construction printing, from the manufacturer's own Level 1 training. Designing for the printer, COBOD Slice, the BOD2 itself, printing concrete, and the material delivery system — and, running through all five, the thing Level 1 exists to establish: where your authority ends and whose begins.

$250, once. Open to anyone — no printer access required. About five hours of work, at whatever pace suits you.

Enroll See the full syllabus

$250Once, no expiry
6Lessons
70Assessed questions
~5 hOf work, no deadline

What this certification is

A BOD2 is a gantry several metres across, moving under power, delivering concrete through a pressurised hose. It can injure somebody. The industry's answer to that is not a longer manual; it is a strict separation between the people who understand the machine and the people authorised to change what it does.

Level 1 puts you firmly in the first group, and tells you so repeatedly. You finish it able to describe how the printer, the slicer, the concrete and the delivery system behave as one machine rather than four; to name the components and axes, which is a safety requirement before it is anything else; to recognise the common failure modes; and to say without hesitating which of them you may act on and which you must escalate.

What it does. Level 1 is the prerequisite for Level 2 on-site training, where authority to operate is earned under supervision, on a machine, in person.

What it does not do. It does not make you an operator. It is not a licence, a trade qualification or a permit, and it does not authorise independent installation, slicing, material modification, printer operation or troubleshooting outside approved supervision.

The six lessons

Five from COBOD's own Level 1 documentation, each ending in an eight-question review. Then the certification examination.

Part A · Lesson 1 Modeling and designing for 3DCP Why the model is instructional rather than representational. The four project phases and why upstream errors become downstream failures. The constraints that have no equivalent in conventional construction — continuous extrusion, layer adhesion, overhang limits, corner acceleration, cold joints. And the finding that surprises designers: in 3DCP, complexity adds risk, not value.
Part A · Lesson 2 COBOD Slice A slicer is not a visualiser; it is a manufacturing control interface, and its output is executed verbatim. Where slicing sits in the workflow, the core parameters and why none of them can be changed in isolation, simulation and its limits, and why a slicing error is so often misdiagnosed later as a material or printer fault.
Part B · Lesson 3 The BOD2 printer The modular gantry: structure, motion, electrical, control, printhead. Components and axes by name. Installation logic and site preparation. Alignment, calibration and tolerances, and why poor alignment damages the machine rather than merely the wall. Site Acceptance Testing, the printing workflow, daily checks, and the role structure.
Part C · Lesson 4 3D printing concrete Safety first: cement is caustic, powders are respirable, admixtures are hazardous in their own right. Then why printing concrete has to satisfy requirements that pull against each other, the three material KPIs, what each admixture fixes and what it breaks, the four failure modes, and curing in arid, windy, high-sun conditions — which in northern New Mexico is the default, not the exception.
Part C · Lesson 5 The material delivery system Silos, batch plant, piston pump, hose management. Why the MDS is half the machine rather than a service to it. Cleaning as system preservation rather than tidiness. Hose clogging — the most common failure, and the one where the improvised fixes are what injure people.
Part D · Lesson 6 Final certification examination Thirty questions across all five lessons, weighted toward authority limits and escalation. Pass mark 80 per cent. Unlimited retakes, best attempt standing — the point is that you know the material before you stand next to the machine, not that you knew it first time.

How it is assessed

Each of the five lessons ends in an eight-question review that must be passed at 80 per cent before the next lesson opens. Lesson six is the examination: thirty questions drawn from all five, also at 80 per cent. The certificate is issued when every lesson is complete, and not before.

Every question is multiple choice, graded on the server, and recorded against your account with a timestamp. Retakes are unlimited and your best attempt stands.

The certificate carries a verification code, like every Academy certificate, and anyone you give the code to can check it at /learn/verify. It states on its face that Level 1 is theoretical and preparatory and confers no operating authority, because a certificate that could be mistaken for an operator's licence would be worse than none.

What it costs

$250, once. Not a subscription, and not part of one.

This course is not included in the curriculum subscription. The fourteen self-paced courses on regenerative building are one thing; this is manufacturer training on specific hardware, it gates on-site training, and places in the Level 2 programme that follows are limited by how many printers exist. It is enrolled and priced separately, and holding a subscription does not open it.

Your access does not expire. One payment, the course is yours, and so is the certificate — including whatever revisions COBOD's material goes through later. There is nothing to renew.

If $250 is what is stopping you, say so. Scholarship support covers this course on the same basis as the rest of the Academy. Mention it in the form below and we will send you the application — there is no deadline and no fee to apply.

How long it takes

About five hours of work, and there is no time limit.

That is roughly two and a half hours of reading across the six lessons, plus the seventy assessed questions and however much re-reading they send you back for. Most people do it across a week of evenings. Some do it in a day, and the material does not punish either.

Nothing expires and nothing is scheduled. There is no cohort to keep up with and no window to finish in. The one thing worth not rushing is the examination, which draws on all five lessons and rewards having actually read them.

What happens after Level 1

Level 2 is where operating authority is actually earned — supervised, in person, on a machine that is printing.

We run it alongside live builds rather than on a calendar. A gantry only teaches when it is building something: a cohort standing around a parked printer gets a demonstration, and a cohort on a live pour gets alignment, a Site Acceptance Test, a real hose clog and a cleaning cycle that matters. So sessions are pegged to actual production windows and announced six to eight weeks ahead, rather than scheduled in advance and hoped for.

  • Four to five days. An install-and-SAT day, a slicing-and-dry-run day, two print days, and a cleaning-and-shutdown day. A print cycle does not compress into a weekend.
  • Four to six places. One machine and one printer operator does not supervise more than that on alignment and material delivery work.
  • Level 1 graduates are notified first, in the order they finished.

There is no Level 2 waiting list to join separately. Tick the box on the form below and we will write to you when a window opens. Finishing Level 1 is what puts you at the front of it.

Who it is for

Level 1 is open to anyone. No construction background, no prior 3D printing experience, and no route to a printer required — you do not need to work somewhere that owns a BOD2, and you do not need one lined up. If the subject interests you, that is enough.

What is assumed is that you will take the authority limits seriously, because the rest of the course is built on them.

If you are coming to this with no building background at all, the Academy's free foundation course, Regenerative Design Philosophy, is a good place to start first. It is not a prerequisite for anything here.

Enroll

Tell us what you are working on. A person reads everything that comes in and will send you the enrollment details and the invoice — this one is handled directly rather than through a checkout, because it is a certification rather than a subscription. You do not need printer access to take it.

PA — COBOD BOD2 printer course inquiry

$250, once. Not a subscription, and not part of one. Six lessons, a review at the end of each, a thirty-question cross-module examination, a legal acknowledgment and a certificate — about five hours of work, with no time limit and no expiry on your access.

Open to anyone. No construction background, no prior 3D printing experience, and no route to a printer required. The question below about printer access is so we know what you are working toward, not a condition of enrollment.

Level 1 is theoretical and preparatory. It does not authorise you to operate a printer. It is the prerequisite for Level 2 on-site training, where operating authority is earned under supervision — and Level 2 places are limited, by how many machines exist. Tick the box below and we will write to you when a window opens.

Send this and a person will reply with the enrollment details and the invoice. If the fee is what is stopping you, say so and we will send you the scholarship application.