(SME: Dearborn, MI) -- SME, for more than 80 years a leader in promoting advanced manufacturing and developing the workforce, announced its Additive Manufacturing Community Awards at the 26th annual RAPID Conference & Exposition in Orlando.
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SME Additive Manufacturing Industry Achievement Award
Hans Langer, Ph.D., founder and CEO of EOS GmbH, the global technology and quality leader for high-end additive manufacturing solutions, received the 2016 SME Additive Manufacturing Industry Achievement Award.
“This award is a recognition of Langer’s technical innovations and the widespread impact his company has had on the additive manufacturing industry since its start in 1989,” says Jason Jones, Ph.D., chair of SME’s Additive Manufacturing Community.
Langer is a major pioneer in the additive manufacturing industry. In 2011, he was ranked among the 20 most influential personalities in additive manufacturing by the British additive manufacturing magazine TCT, and in 2008, he was awarded the Bavarian State Medal. His company has also received several important industry citations; among them are three German “Top 100” innovation awards for medium-sized enterprises, two German “Bavaria's Best 50" awards, and in 2015, the “Game Changer Award" by Manager Magazine and Bain & Co.
Nominations for the SME Additive Manufacturing Industry Achievement Award come from previous winners, as well as SME's Additive Manufacturing Community advisors. SME's Additive Manufacturing Community promotes and showcases innovative additive manufacturing technologies as well as works closely with industry and academia to take manufacturing to a new level through adoption of these technologies.
Dick Aubin Distinguished Paper Award
SME also announced the winners of the Dick Aubin Distinguished Paper Award (named for the late additive manufacturing pioneer, Dick Aubin) for “Contact-Free Support Structures for Part Overhangs in Powder-Bed Metal Additive Manufacturing,” written by Kevin Chou, Ph.D., and Bo Cheng of the University of Alabama, and Kenneth Cooper and Phillip Steele of Marshall Space Flight Center.
The Rochester Institute of Technology sponsored the award, which was given for the paper’s documented concept of employing a novel thermal management strategy to avoid distortion in parts made with metal powder-bed fusion. This innovation significantly reduces the need to anchor part features using conventional support structures, which in turn reduces the requirements for post-print finishing of parts (typically including wire electrical discharge machining). This innovation simplifies the process and helps reduce the infrastructure needed to print metal parts.
Direct Digital Manufacturing Design Competition
In the 2016 Design for Direct Digital Manufacturing Competition, high-school and college designers and engineers were challenged to take an unmanned aerial vehicle design, and by applying additive manufacturing, improve on it. Contestants chose from designs available in the public domain. The award was sponsored by SME’s Direct Digital Manufacturing Tech Group. The winners, from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, were students Tito Arana, Jordan Castillo, Michael Gager, Dan Stella, and Joanel Vasquez, along with their academic advisor, Stephen Johnston, Ph.D.
Their winning design illustrates an innovative application that helps reduce operational impact and increase efficiency in data collection of bridge evaluation and worker safety. The utilization of additive manufacturing enabled weight efficiency and structural optimization. The team compiled a complete report of the device, its application, and the business case for the market.
RAPID Exhibitor Innovation Award
The RAPID Innovation Award, sponsored by Stratasys, recognizes new products or services exhibited at the RAPID conference and judged to have the greatest potential impact on the industry. With a record number of 27 entries this year, the finalists were 3DSIM, Additive Industries, Essentium Materials, and HP Inc. All four companies brought forth inventive, significant technological advancements.
The overall winner was Essentium. The team at Essentium introduced a new and innovative method for welding thermoplastic interfaces of 3D-printed parts using the extreme heating response of nanoparticles. They tackled the issue of strength in the z-direction inherent to additive manufacturing.
RAPID People’s Choice Award
The RAPID People’s Choice Award, also sponsored by Stratasys, was determined by popular vote of RAPID conference attendees. RAPID attendees were able to vote for their favorite display using the RAPID 2016 mobile app. The winning exhibitor was HP Inc., and its display was recognized for being the most interactive, technically and aesthetically impressive, and visually appealing and engaging.
HP also made a major product announcement and unveiled the world’s first production-ready, commercial 3D printing system. Stephen Nigro, president of HP’s 3D printing business, also participated in a keynote session to kick off the event.
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