Seven finalists (teams) presented their 3D printing projects to the nine jury members from various industries on October 13, 2022 in the cafeteria of Neu- Ulm University (HNU). Approximately 65 visitors came to be present at the final on site. In addition, interested people had the opportunity to follow the event live on YouTube and vote for an audience award.
"We signed up for fun. We didn't expect to get into the finals. And to win the whole thing? No way!" says Joel Izquierdo incredulously in the RegioTV video clip. But fun turned into seriousness and Izquiero, together with his team-mates Martin Dauner and Florian Klimmer, were declared the winners of the German 3D Printing Challenge.
Convinced the jury: the end product will be lighter and cheaper
The 3D layering team, which includes Dauner, Izquierdo and Klimmer, won over the jury with their resource-saving concept for "masking and protecting uncoated areas during thermal spraying." In simpler terms, the three researchers from Waiblingen have found a way to coat 3D-printed components made of plastic with metal. This makes the product lighter and cheaper at the same time, because it does not have to be printed or manufactured entirely from metal. The team already has its first customers on hand and wants to push its idea, for which it says it has studied more than 40 different materials.
Second place and the audience award, voted for by the live audience, went to Felix Kottmann, Benjamin Streichert and Dr. Daniel Grosch. Their 3D-printed object, a bark beetle trap, is part of a self-sufficient system that can monitor a bark beetle population in real time and transmit the data along with the environmental conditions at the same geo-location.
Customizable chocolate bars landed in 3rd place
The MyChocolateDream team led by Sandra Stockmar and Pierre Stippl landed in third place. Their product enables the individual production of personalized chocolate bars. According to their business plan, customers can design their own chocolate bars online directly when ordering. Using the 3D printing process, the sweets can then be produced in any number of pieces and colors.
Also presented at the finals were: the "Geopuzzle" project by Lutz Westerfeld (4th place), the "Offgrid Portable Cyberdeck" by Natalia Gebbert, Julia Günther, Cindy Schwab and Sören Gebbert (5th place), the "dreiD.art" by Matthias Berchtold (parallel 5th place) and the "Individual PC Mouse" by Niklas Müller (7th place).
The live stream video will soon be available at www. 3d-druck-challenge.de.
