Additive Industries has announced the finalists of its 3D printing competition, Additive World Design for Additive Manufacturing Challenge 2019. From a group of 121 contestants, both professionals and students, three finalists were selected per category, the company said.
In the professional category, Carbon Performance Limited, UK, used topology optimization to make a suspension upright, one of the most critical load bearing components of the sport car, to achieve a 30% weight reduction, while K3D, the Netherlands, improved the performance of a dough knife through additive manufacturing (AM). K3D also saved up to 90% of the weight and reduced the production price. The third finalist in the professional category, Kartheek Raghu, from the Indian company Wipro3D, redesigned the conventional design of a thermal trap for a sublimation process. The cold trap is a device that condenses all vapours, except the permanent gases into a liquid or solid. The redesign contains fine lattice structure that can hold the cryogenic temperature for longer and therefore improves performance.
Weight reduction
In the student category, two students from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore developed a brake caliper and managed to reduce the weight by 2.61kg, a 35% weight reduction of the overall part. Abraham Mathew from the McMaster University (Canada) developed a topography optimized propellant tank to improve the stiffness of thin walled parts by modifying surface features without increasing wall thickness and consequently mass. The third finalist in the student category, Obasogie Okpamen from the Landmark University Nigeria achieved mass and material reduction in his version of a twin spark connecting rod.
The two honourable mentions in the professional category were Aidro Hydraulics & 3D Printing, Italy with their Unibody Hydraulic System, which features complex internal and external geometries, and Contirod-Düse from Nina Uppenkam, SMS Group GmbH, Germany with a new AM design for a nozzle which requires only 35 mm of space compared to a previous 65 mm, and weighs 0.85 kg instead of 2.5 kg.
‘The redesigns submitted from all over the world and across different fields like automotive, aerospace, medical, tooling, and high tech, demonstrated how product designs can be improved when the freedom of additive manufacturing is applied,’ said Daan Kersten, CEO of Additive Industries. ‘This year again we saw major focus on the elimination of conventional manufacturing difficulties, minimization of assembly and lowering logistical costs. There are also interesting potential business cases within both categories.’
This story uses material from Additive Industries,with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
