The Best in Student Engineering Shines in 13th Annual Stratasys Extreme Redesign 3D Printing Challenge

3D printing solutions company Stratasys often uses the GrabCAD platform, the largest online collaborative environment for manufacturers, engineers, and designers in the world, to provide 3D printing and design challenges to the 3D modeling community – and who doesn’t love a good challenge? A perennial favorite is the Stratasys Extreme Redesign 3D Printing Challenge; the 13th edition of the challenge kicked off a little less than six months after the impressive winners of the 12th annual challenge were announced.

The globally-recognized contest gives students the opportunity to use 3D printing technology to design an original work of art or architecture, create a new product that improves how a task is accomplished, or redesign an existing product. Participating teams, or individuals, had to make their designs using CAD software; judging criteria was based on design creativity, a mechanically sound design, aesthetics, how useful the product is, and if it’s realistically achievable. Members on this year’s panel of judges included:

• Ryan Erickson, Cedar Park STEM School, District 196, Apple Valley, MN
• Diana Foster, Manufacturing Engineer II, Harris Corporation
• Todd Grimm, President, T.A. Grimm and Associates
• Michael Santolupo, Design Teacher, John Paul II Catholic Secondary School, London, Ontario

Today, Stratasys announced the winning entries for the 2017 Extreme Redesign 3D Printing Challenge.

“3D printing has the potential to transform industries – truly revolutionizing how things are made. Our Extreme Redesign Challenge regularly highlights the most significant student innovations achieved with 3D printing, led by the intellect of young minds. This year, we received some of the strongest entries in the contest’s 10-plus year history. These winners truly represent the ‘best of the best’ in student creativity and design,” said Gina Scala, Director of Marketing, Global Education, Stratasys.

The challenge categories included Engineering: Secondary Education (middle and high school) and Engineering: Post-Secondary Education; Art, Architecture, and Design (all grade levels); and the National Coalition of Advanced Technology Centers (NCATC) Member School category. Each first place winner will receive a $2,500 scholarship from Stratasys, while second place winners and the NCATC winner will be awarded $1,000 scholarships; the instructors of the first place winners will also get a demo 3D printer for a limited time use in the classroom.

The first place winner in the Engineering: Secondary Education category is senior Grayson Galisky, from Los Alamitos High School in California, with his Biomimetic Robotic Prosthetic Hand. Galisky explained that most of the parts were 3D printed on an [easyazon_link identifier=”B00LLF5QNO” locale=”US” tag=”3dprint09-20″]Ultimaker 2[/easyazon_link], using an E3D extrusion upgrade kit, and that it took about 45 minutes to build one finger.

“My design innovates on the current state of robot hands in several way, but the most significant is that takes advantage of biomechanics to achieve a higher level of dexterity,” explained Galisky. “My design incorporates the major components of the human hand (bones, ligaments, tendons, tendon sheath, intrinsic muscle) which allows my hand to have human like movement and speed. Instead of using traditional mechanical joints, I followed the blueprint of the human hand, using printed ligaments and laser cut rubber to form a joint capsule, which has had it rewards in terms of performance and improved dexterity over traditional robot hands.”

The second place Engineering: Secondary Education winner is Connor Meehan, a student at Saline High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Meehan designed a Bi-Directional Ratchet, which lets the user access tight spaces that are otherwise not able to be reached; in addition, the ratchet allows people with dexterity issues to use the tool, as it doesn’t need the requisite grip strength necessary for a traditional ratchet.

University of Alabama student Thomas Salverson, from Nebraska, took first place in the Engineering: Post-Secondary Education category with his adjustable, reusable, modular (ARM) Cast. The cast is intended to be a replacement for the traditional plaster/fiberglass cast, which takes a long time to prepare and must be cut off once the patient has healed. Salverson’s cast consists of the modular ring, the adjustable pads, and the elbow joint.

“The ARM Cast was printed with ABS plastic on a FDM 3D printer. ABS was used as it is far stronger than other common types of FDM filament like PLA. The ARM Cast utilizes a FDM printer’s capabilities to create in place assembly’s as seen in both the modular ring and adjustment pad. Printing ‘in-place’ assemblies increases production and manufacturing efficiency since it decreases both the unique part count and post-manufacturing preparation time,” Salverson explained.

The second place winners in the Engineering: Post-Secondary Education category were Canadian students Matthew Wong-Chun-Sen and Luis Carvalheiro from Ryerson University. The two designed a Fender Lock, which works by securely attaching right to a bicycle’s frame, instead of the normal seat-post method.

Once the Fender Lock has been attached, it can be extended to cover the bike’s back wheel, which prevents water and other elements from flying up onto the moving cyclist. It can be retracted and rotated along the hinge when it’s not needed, and hooks right onto the lock mechanism that’s secured underneath the seat of the bike.

The first place winner of the Art, Architecture, and Design category is my favorite – an Intricate Flower Centerpiece, inspired by the dahlia and zinnia flowers, by Daniel Fahy from the University of Oxford. The outer shape of the flower is split into eight parts, all of which move inwards with gears to form an enclosure, and the model can be used as a jewelry box or a candle stand.

Fahy said, “This model is a piece of functional art, designed with the goal of conveying that with the advent of 3D printing the possibilities are endless. If you imagine it, you can build it (depending on your CAD skills, as I quickly found out). All surfaces have been detailed/lofted/twisted to emphasise this point. This piece would be extremely complex/impossible to manufacture using traditional methods.”

Sergey Kuznetsov, from St. Petersburg in Russia, won second place in the Art, Architecture, and Design category with his beautiful Khachkar – Armenian Cross Stone. Kuznetsov explained that Khachkars are outdoor steles, typically carved from stone by Armenian craftspeople, and, as they are usually around 1.5 meters tall, used as a focal point in worship; Kuznetsov used DLP and SLA 3D printing to make his Khachkar.

The winner of the NCATC category is Jacob Haynes from Danville Community College in Virginia. Daynes designed a Universal Tablet Holder for a [easyazon_link identifier=”B00VSITBJO” locale=”US” tag=”3dprint09-20″]Phantom Drone 3[/easyazon_link], because his school is thinking about starting a drone program.

“The phantom drone 3 could only hold a small object like a phone, but the problem is that you can not see that much with just a phone,” Haynes explained.

He said his teacher gave him a design project that would be able to hold a tablet-sized device, while also fitting onto the drone controller. In addition to 3D printing, Haynes also made good use of rubber bands, nuts, and bolts.

The 2018 Extreme Redesign 3D Printing Challenge will begin on October 6, 2017; for more information on all of the 2017 contest submissions, you can check out the GrabCAD Challenge page. Discuss in the Extreme Redesign forum at 3DPB.com.