Announcements of the winning entries in the MPIF PM Design Excellence Competition are keenly awaited each year at the annual POWDERMET conferences. Seven Grand Prizes and twelve Awards of Distinction in the 2018 competition were revealed during POWDERMET2018 at the luncheon on June 18. Winning parts were described and displayed on the large screen and representatives of parts’ manufacturers, and in some cases customers, stepped up to receive their award plaques.
As usual, awards were made in multiple application categories, covering automotive, hand-tools, hardware/appliances, medical/dental, electronics/electrical, lawn & garden/off-highway, and aerospace/military/firearms sectors. MIM parts featured prominently in the winners, taking more than half the prizes (four of the seven Grand Prizes and six of the Awards of Distinction), with leading companies returning with new honors: Arc Group Worldwide gaining five and Indo-MIM Pvt. Ltd gaining four prizes. In terms of materials, various types of stainless steel featured in four of the seven Grand Prizes, two of the winners were low-alloy steel parts, one included a bronze bearing, and one was an aluminum metal-matrix composite material. For the Awards of Distinction, six were stainless, five were various low-alloy steels and one was made of Permalloy nickel–iron alloy. The winning parts illustrated the advance of PM applications in new product designs and technologies, for example, in the downsizing or light-weighting of automotive components.
This article appeared in the Sept/Oct issue of Metal Powder Report.
