The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has recognized “best-in-class” additive manufacturing (AM) technologies with its first AM Innovation Awards, showcased at its all-new AM Tech Forum on June 17. ASME hosted the event to help engineers, product designers, manufacturers and technology professionals stay up to speed with rapid developments in 3D printing. The interactive virtual event featured nearly 40 new product and service demonstrations and connected participants with experts and solutions to their AM challenges.
“It’s exciting to see all the work the AM community is doing to accelerate applications,” says Debbie Holton, ASME’s managing director of industry events. “We’re seeing more efficiency, improved quality, and new machines, materials and tools to help engineers and manufacturers in a variety of industries better plan and design innovative new products.”
The winners reflect key needs and trends in additive manufacturing, including the use of artificial intelligence for design and processing efficiency, the continuing need for more materials, particularly those with functionality for production, and ongoing effort to increase the speed of AM technologies. AM Innovation Award winners were announced in five categories, along with a “Customer Choice Award” selected solely by attendees.
The winners are:
Machines & Processes – Nexa3D: “Transforming AM”
The company’s NXE 400 machine can efficiently and quickly produce parts with SL-like details and thermoplastic-grade mechanical properties.
Materials – 3D Systems: “Advancing the Revolution in Photopolymer 3D Printing Performance”
The company’s Figure 4 3D printing solution includes platform, software, and materials.
Software – Intellegens: “Deep Learning for Additive Manufacturing”
The company’s Alchemite software uses unique deep learning algorithms first developed at the University of Cambridge to help AM teams extract value from their data, optimizing build parameters and ensuring more repeatable AM processes, while greatly reducing the need for testing.
Measurement & Analysis – Sigma Labs: “Quality Assurance with PrintRite 3D”
The latest release of the company’s PrintRite3D monitoring solution includes new features that make it easier to find anomalies in the process data, as well as production fleet optionality with machine-to-machine qualifications, and multi-laser system support.
Startup – Intellegens: “Deep Learning for Additive Manufacturing”
Intellegens was founded in 2017 by a team of interdisciplinary and multicultural PhDs, physicists, data and computer scientists, software developers and industry professionals with a mission to help clients accelerate innovation by using unique deep learning solutions to extract valuable information from existing processes and data.
Customer Choice –AM-Flow: “Regaining Control of Your Production with AM Post Processing Automation”
AM-Flow’s stack of software integrates with AM production hardware to provide building blocks for end-to-end automation of the 3D-printing process
Product demonstrations from the winners and other exhibitors can be viewed on-demand through Aug. 17 at: https://amtechforum.vfairs.com/ (Free registration required to access.)
ASME has formed strategic alliances with America Makes and the Association for Manufacturing Technology to present the AM Tech Forum and offer other AM resources.
Visit https://event.asme.org/AMtechforum/awards for more information.