A panel of industry veterans selected entries from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Equispheres Inc. as Advanced Finishing and Advanced Concepts winners of AMUG’s annual Technical Competition. AMUG Members selected the entry by Ricoh 3D for Healthcare as the Members’ Choice winner.
AMUG’s annual Technical Competition recognizes excellence in additive manufacturing applications and finishing techniques.
Ten judges (AMUG DINOs) scrutinized every detail of the competition entries to select Advanced Finishing and Advanced Concepts winners. These judges were Rey Chu, Joerg Griessbach, Tom Mueller, Bruce Okkema, Rick Pressley, Colton Rooney, Harold Sears, Ed Tackett, Sean Wise, and Mark Wynn.
What did the winners showcase?
As you may have read in our coverage of the event, Ryan Watkins, research engineer with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), submitted the winning entry in the Advanced Finishing category, “Mars Sample Return Crush Lattices.” While additive manufacturing produced small unit-cell lattice structures, printing limitations yielded ligament thicknesses (and overall part mass) that were suboptimal for the mission.
Evan Butler-Jones, vice president of product & strategy at Equispheres Inc., submitted the winning entry for Advanced Concepts but quickly acknowledged that the project was a collaborative effort with Martinrea International, represented by Steve Geddes, senior technical specialist.
Butler-Jones’ entry titled “Applying Additive Manufacturing for Integrated Passive Cooling in an e-Motor Housing” leveraged Martinrea’s design and engineering talent, which is focused on the automotive sector, and Equispheres’ additive manufacturing process expertise to deliver an aluminum part that would be impossible to produce using conventional manufacturing. Doing so uncovered significant potential for use cases in electric vehicles (EVs) and other industries with thermal management challenges.
The design and printing process produced an integrated vapor chamber for two-phase passive and liquid cooling in a single structure, which eliminates the need for additional cooling components while improving heat transfer efficiency. Fundamentally, the laser powder bed fusion process combined partial and full melting to produce the passively cooled vapor chambers within the motor housing.
Through voting by AMUG’s Members, Luke Hileman, lead technician for Ricoh 3D for Healthcare, won the Members’ Choice category. The “Neonatal Thoracentesis Trainer” entry will serve as a crucial training tool for healthcare professionals, enhancing their skills in the life-saving procedure.
The high-fidelity simulation model used advanced printing techniques and technology to create the trainer with haptics that “feel like the real thing.” Thoracentesis is a procedure to drain fluid from the space between the lungs and the chest wall, called the pleural space.
For Advanced Finishing, Aaron Sherman of HellermanTyton took second place for “Miniature Tabletop Gaming Models by Pocket Dimension Studios.” Third place was awarded to Brent Griffith of Labconco Corporation for “Nature’s Grip Recreated: Advanced 3D Print Finishing Techniques on Rock Climbing.”
In Advanced Concepts, second place was awarded to the Members’ Choice winner, Luke Hileman. Jacob Kallivayakik of Eaton Corporation garnered third place for “AM for Electric Machines.”
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