During the 8^th edition of the Additive World Conference, Chairman of the Jury, Ultimaker’s Steven van de Staak, announced K3D and Younes Chahid as winners of the Additive World Design for Additive Manufacturing Challenge 2020. All finalists, three in the student category and three professionals, pitched their designs in a video for the 6-member jury. After careful deliberation they made a unanimous and well-advised selection in both categories. The winning designs, a ‘Laser Welding Head’ and a ‘Hip Implants Stem Design’, are inspiring use cases of industrial 3D metal printing.

In the student category the first prize went to Younes Chahid from BiometicAM based in the United Kingdom with his Hip Implant Stem design. This noble and highly functional application improves patients’ lives by shortening operation times as well as recovery times. The design of the structure is fully optimized with varying lattice densities and thicknesses for optimal bone ingrowth. Younes’s story is complete and told with expertise and passion. The part can only be produced using metal additive manufacturing and in addition, is designed to print without supports, capable for being nested to maximise the total number of parts per build and therefore also lowering the total cost per part to allow for democratising this for patients around the world.

The winner of the professional category is K3D of The Netherlands, winning this contest the second year in the row. K3D CTO Jaap Bulsink presented the Laser Welding Head they developed for Hittech Bihca, supplier of precision components.  Improved performance, functional integration, conformal cooling channels, light-weighting and optimized local porosities are all features that make this application a clear winner in a tough category this year with some other excellent case studies. The judges felt it refreshing to see that the K3D application made a strong business case and design in a real, industrial application, a category that isn’t always well represented in design competitions. This design could not be produced in any other way than additive manufacturing and on top of that it can be printed without any supports in an efficient build setup, Design for Additive Manufacturing at its best.

An honorable mention is well deserved for Nina Uppenkamp, from the SMS Group in Germany. Her redesigned Media Block is a great design with a compelling business case which has been very well executed. A good demonstration of a manifold that is optimized for metal additive manufacturing. One of the things that makes her case even stronger is that both the original part and the redesigned part were functionally tested and compared. Her presentation was also amongst the best we have seen, very concise and professional.

All finalists get a free licence of Altair Inspire and Autodesk Netfabb software. Younes Chahid, as student winner, has won an Ultimaker 2+ printer while the team of K3D will receive an Ultimaker S3, both winners will also receive a 3D printing starter-pack from MakerPoint.