Additive Industries Announces the Winners of the Design for Additive Manufacturing Challenge

We cover a lot of 3D printing and 3D design contests on a regular basis, which I love because we get to see such a wide range of design talent at every level. We’ve seen remarkable winning designs from children as young as five years old. Some challenges, however, are strictly aimed at professionals or soon-to-be professionals from higher education, like the Additive World Design for Additive Manufacturing Challenge, now in its third year. The wordily named competition aims to accelerate the growth of industrial additive manufacturing and challenges participates to redesign an existing, traditionally manufactured component for 3D printing.

The finalists of the third annual competition were announced last month, and last week Additive Industries announced the winners from the professional and student categories, selected from a pool of 76 entrants. Taking first place in the professional category was the Chocolate Shock Prevention Team from Lareka Confectionery Equipment. (We wondered about it when the team was named a finalist last month, and I still desperately want to know: what exactly is chocolate shock? Google is no help.) The team won for their redesign of a packaging sealer arm; the 3D printed component not only resulted in better chocolate packaging, due to better temperature regulation, but reduced the number of parts needed by 50.

In the student category, Cassidy Silbernagel of the University of Nottingham won for the second year in a row. Last year, he took first place for an electric motor casing design, and this year he impressed the judges with his automotive design expertise yet again, submitting a redesigned carburetor with integrated moving parts, floats, lightweight internal lattice structures and an optimized design that reduced the need for supports. Design engineering students everywhere are doubtless hoping that Silbernagel graduates soon.

The awards were announced by Scott Summit, Chairman of the Jury, during the Additive World Awards Dinner in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The winners in each category will have their designs 3D printed in metal, and will also receive an Ultimaker 3D printer (Ultimaker 2+ for the student category and Ultimaker 3 for the professional category) and an assortment of prizes from Autodesk, as well as an invitation to present during the annual Masterclass: Design for Additive Manufacturing, which will be hosted by Additive Industries during Dutch Design Week in October. The top three finalists in each category will also receive licenses to Netfabb and Inspire software.

In addition to the challenge winners, two others received Additive World Awards for their contributions to additive manufacturing last week. Dr.-Ing. Wilhelm Meiners, leader of the Rapid Manufacturing Group at Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT, was given the Industrial Achievement Award for his decades of work, going all the way back to his research on selective laser melting technology in the 1990s, as well as his contributions to additive manufacturing education and collaboration through his institute. An Industrial Achievement Award was also given to Youping Gao of Castheon, Inc. and Aerojet Rocketdyne for his work on process and application development for additive manufacturing. Gao was the head of the team that certified the first 3D printed part for a manned space flight. Discuss in the Additive Industries forum at 3DPB.com.