The winners in GE’s latest additive manufacturing contest, Martin Leuterer from EOS, Rob Snoejis from LayerWise and Bernhard Tabernig from PLANSEE, took home $50,000 for helping GE find new ways to produce complex parts with refractory metals. For GE it might have been one of the best investments ever, since the new parts will be used in creating better components for its medical imaging division.
The 3D Printing Production Quest: High Precision and Advanced Materials contest took off in June 2013, together with another open 3D printing contest, or quest, for its aerospace division.
GE partnered with NineSigma, experts in external innovation resources, on this project. According to Denys Resnick, vice president of Strategic Programs at NineSigma Through open innovation they were able to uncover fresh perspectives from experts in new areas, accelerate the pace of innovation and transform industries, faster.
Participants representing research teams from academia, start-ups and established businesses from six countries competed in the quest. Each of their specific skills were necessary to meet GE’s steep requirements for the new medical imaging device components: they had to be made from high density, high atomic number metals, which can be difficult to shape, while, at the same time, have complex geometries that had to be rendered with very high precision. To achieve this internally would probably have costed GE millions in R&D; by opening up and gamifying the research it spent little over $150,000 and got it done in a fraction of the time.
