The 3D Printing Industry Awards will take place next month. So far we have received over 55,000 votes, making this the largest survey of the 3D printing industry.
At our black-tie dinner in London the winners will be announced. And, what could be a more appropriate way to acknowledge excellence in additive manufacturing than with a 3D printed trophy?
3D Printing Industry, in partnership with Protolabs, held a design competition hosted on MyMiniFactory to find a design for this years trophy.
Selecting a winner from over one hundred entries was no easy task. The standard of entries was even higher than in previous years. Designers from across the world produced excellent work demonstrating how two advanced 3D printing technologies could be used to create the trophy.
Before we get to the winner here are some of the other designs the judges here and at Protolabs liked. As Daniel Cohn, Managing Director, Protolabs Germany puts it, “It’s an honour to be involved in the trophy design competition for the 2019 3D Printing Industry Awards. The judging process has been really exciting due to the high quality and creativity of the submissions and I would like to thank all the designers for their hard work.”
Honorable mentions for the 2019 3D Printing Industry trophy design competition
The inspiration behind the Metamorphic Gem design by Sruthi Venkatesh comes from, “3D printing … being a disruptive technology is aiding in manufacturing complex design possibilities and is paving the way for a better future.This technology is a metamorphic gem and this is being symbolized in the design for the 3D Printing Industry Awards trophy.” Readers may remember Venkatesh as the winner of last year’s design competition.
Sebastiano Di Grazia’s entry is a celebration of the capabilities of 3D printing. Following the design brief, “These are the words I took for the inspiration of this design, taking in consideration SLA and MJF technologies to create a design with the particular features such as: Lattice structure, the internal channels or the level of detail offered by SLA.”
Jeremy Webb explains that his design, “celebrates the astounding achievements that can be made with additive manufacturing while acknowledging that the 3D-printing community is international. It represents the strides that we can make when we work together across the globe to invent new techniques, technologies, and methods.”
This trophy design was made by dionisis and modeled with visual coding utilising Rhino 6, Grasshopper and Python. The design is inspired by industrial elements.
The winner of the 3D Printing Industry and Protolabs trophy design competition is…
This year winning designer is Ferran Sánchez Monferrer. Ferran is currently studying Design for Additive Manufacturing at Fundació CIM-UPC.
Daniel Cohn, Managing Director, of Protolabs Germany, said, “We set out to choose a design that was beautiful and showcased our stereolithography and Multi Jet Fusion capabilities. We’ve chosen Ferran’s ‘Optim’ trophy design as the winner because it represents the possibilities and variability of 3D printing in a very elegant way. It demonstrates how different materials can lead to a superior design, when the right balance is struck – ‘yin and yang’ in a beautiful 3D printed object!”
Protolabs are currently 3D printing the winning design and when the winners of the 2019 3D Printing Industry Awards are announced on June 6th, each winner will receive a trophy. Ferran, will also be receiving an Ultimaker 3.
If you want to join us in London for the Awards ceremony than get in contact – a few final tickets are still available.
A few questions with winning designer Ferran Sánchez Monferrer
3D Printing Industry and our partners at Protolabs, MyMiniFactory and Ultimaker congratulate Ferran on his winning design, I asked him a few questions about the design process and his involvement with 3D printing.
3DPI: How long have you been a designer, and how did you start designing for 3D printing?
Ferran Sánchez Monferrer: In 2016 I discovered the world of additive manufacturing and all its possibilities. That year I decided to buy a RepRap printer and I learned by myself how it worked and how to design with this amazing technology.
I realized that 3D design was my passion and, before finishing my degree, I had the opportunity to do an Erasmus in Tampere (Finland) where I wrote my thesis on additive manufacturing and 3D scanning.
Last year I graduated in mechanical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) of Terrassa (Spain) and nowadays I am currently studying a master’s degree in DfAM at the “Fundació CIM-UPC“.
3DPI: Are you planning to become a full time designer?
FSM: Unfortunately I am not a full time designer but to be one is my professional aim. For this reason, I am studying the master’s degree in DfAM.
Every week in this master’s degree people come from all sectors of the industry to explain their experience in additive manufacturing and how to design with current technologies.
In addition, with some colleagues of the master, we are making the final project on the use of 3D scanners and 3D printers to make culture more accessible in museums. We use photogrammetry and professional 3D scanners to obtain the object and we use SLS, SLA and FDM machines to print. This project deals not only with the technical part but also includes its viability for the creation of a new business.
3DPI: What can you tell us your winning trophy design?
FSM: The name of the trophy is “Òptim”, it is a Catalan word that means optimum. My idea was projecting optimization.
The optimization of its construction and post-processing is what I was looking for when I was designing the trophy, without neglecting its aesthetic part. Therefore, the design not only seeks to use the advantages of additive manufacturing, it also tries to avoid its disadvantages of each technology.
In referring to the shapes of the trophy, the MJF piece was designed to focus on the most classic features that can be seen in a functional piece designed with this technology. For this reason, the design includes a Voronoi diagram for the tower and a lattice in its interior. The SLA piece is a diagrid that covers the tower.
3DPI: What are your plans for your new Ultimaker 3D printer?
FSM: My plans are to make new projects to put into practice all the knowledge I have learned these last years. My goal is creating and printing projects from the maker community with the quality offered by the Ultimaker 3D printer.
3DPI: How did you hear about the competition?
FSM: I have always followed Myminifactory website since I have got a printer at home. Seeing this collaboration, I thought it could be a great opportunity to become known in the additive manufacturing world.
Congratulations again to Ferran, and many thanks to Protolabs and Ultimaker for supporting the 3D Printing Industry Awards.
Voting closes next week, so make sure to tell us who is leading the 3D printing industry in 2019.
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Featured image shows the Optim trophy by Ferran Sánchez Monferrer for the 2019 3D Printing Industry Awards.
