This week, during the 8th Additive World Conference in Eindhoven, the winners of the Additive World Design for Additive Manufacturing Challenge 2020 were announced virtually by Ultimaker’s Steven van de Staak, the Chairman of the Jury for the contest. Additive World is an initiative of Additive Industries, which holds the annual design challenge for the purpose of increasing industrial 3D printing examples, in hopes of inspiring other industries to create dedicated AM applications. There are two categories – one for students and one for professionals – and the participants are challenged to redesign a conventional machine or product part for 3D printing.
The professional six-member jury watched the pitch videos for the designs of six finalists, three in each category; you can see these designs in the image below. From left to right, top row to bottom, the finalist designs are:
- “Laser Welding Head,” Jaap Bulsink, K3D Bihca (Netherlands, professional category)
- “Media Block,” Nina Uppenkamp, SMS Group (Germany, professional category)
- “Expandable Intervertebral Cage,” Donatien Campion, 3DMedLab (France, professional category)
- “Hip Implant Stem Design,” Younes Chahid, BiomimeticAM (UK, student category)
- “Stabilizer Mount,” Dong Zhang, SCUT Robotlab, (China, student category)
- “Brake Caliper,” Samir Mulgaonkar, Sunriser (US, student category)
Finalists
After evaluating the finalists’ designs to see if they have what Additive Industries calls “the distinctive features and freedom additive manufacturing has to offer,” made a unanimous decision in each category.
“The winning designs are inspiring use cases of industrial 3D metal printing,” the company writes.
The winner of the professional category, for the second year running, is Dutch company K3D and its Laser Welding Head design, efficiently printed without supports and created for precision components supplier Hittech Bihca. While there were other excellent designs, this particular application has several features that set it above the rest: namely conformal cooling channels, functional integration, improved performance, lightweight, and optimized local porosities. The judges believe that the application, which could not be produced through any other method than 3D printing, “made a strong business case and design in a real, industrial application.”
Chahid from UK-based BiomimeticAM won first prize in the student category for his Hip Implant Stem design. This “highly functional” piece, which is optimized for metal AM with different lattice densities and thicknesses for better bone ingrowth, can help shorten operation and recovery times, which in turn helps to improve patients’ lives. The design can be printed without supports, and since it can be nested, is able to maximize the amount of parts per build; this also helps lower the total cost per part, so it can “allow for democratising this for patients around the world.”
Nina Uppenkamp with Germany’s SMS Group received an honorable mention for her redesigned Media Block, which the judges call a “great design with a compelling business case.” Both the original part, and the redesign, were “functionally tested and compared,” and Uppenkamp’s design is optimized for metal AM.
“Her presentation was also amongst the best we have seen, very concise and professional,” Additive Industries wrote.
All six finalists received a free software license for Altair Inspire and Autodesk Netfabb. The two winners received the 3D printed Award and a 3D printing starter-pack from MakerPoint, while student winner Chahid took home an Ultimaker 2+ printer and the professional K3D team received an Ultimaker S3.
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(Source/Images: Additive Industries)