Poland’s CD3D Holds First 3D Printing Industry Awards: Zortax and TierTime Take Top Awards

At a recent Polish 3D printing trade show, 3D printer maker, MonkeyFab, unveiled a printed 5 foot tall national Polish eagle emblem that announced both 3D printing’s growing influence in the nation as well as MonkeyFab’s own contribution to this technology. While the national emblem won MonkeyFab much acclaim, it was Poland’s Zortrax that dominated Poland’s first 3D printing awards held by CD3D (beating second place MonkeyFab for Best 3D Printing Company.) Awards for the 3D industry were presented in a dozen categories that were voted on by 40 industry (and notable RepRap) experts.

These twelve categories included: The Best Company and Printer; The Best New Company and Printer (Poland); The Best Distributor of 2014 (Poland); The Most Important Polish Event; Man of the Year; The Best International Company of 2014; The Best International 3D Printer; The Most Important Event of 2014; The Biggest Disappointment of 2014.

It’s not surprising that Zortrax took the awards for best 3D company and printer.  It received twice as many votes as MonkeyFab did, placing it in clear victory position going into 2015.  In second and third place for best 3D print company are MonkeyFab and 3Novatica. However, MonkeyFab’s printer got third place to HBot. In the category of Best New Company, winners were 3DGence taking a hardy lead over its competitors–Printify and Endivio.

For Best Polish Event in 3D Printing the voting was neck and neck with a tie between the 3D Print and Scanner Show in Warsaw and Zortrax selling 5,000 3D printers to DELL earlier this year, an event that helped facilitate Zortrax’s dominance in the international 3D printer manufacturing market. In the category of Most Important Event of 2014 for 3D Printing, the story “HP presents its 3D Printer and Technology Multijet Fusion,” won by three votes over Autodesk’s announcement of their rollout and work on the Spark 3D printing platform.  The third most important event was 3D Systems announcement of a partnership with Google on Project Ara and beginning work on a super fast production line for 3D printing.

The experts also voted on the Biggest Disappointment of 2014 in this order: Omni3D; Buccaneer’s failures after Kickstarter; the smart extruder in Makerbot Replicator 5th generation machines; Bre Pettis cast away by Makerbot/Stratasys; fall of the RepRap forum.

Look out 3D printing women, because it appears they are only giving out awards to the Man of the Year! Powel Rokita and Januscz Wojcik were voted for overwhelmingly for their Tytan 3D printer, receiving twice the number of votes as Rafael Tomasiak of Zortrax.

So much changes in one year in the 3D printing industry and we look forward to seeing how 2015 goes for the companies and individuals that make 3D printing such a dynamic industry to work in. Let’s hear your thoughts on CD3D’s voting and survey.  Discuss in the Best of 2014 forum thread on 3DPB.com.  Below you will find the complete results of this year’s voting: