Additive Manufacturing Competition

Competed individually in the 2023 Advanced Additive Manufacturing Competition against teams of three or more people, all of them company-sponsored with dedicated tooling resources. Challenge categories covered SLA, SLS, SLM, and FDM. Tasks ranged from geared mechanisms to pipe manifolds designed for welding to other functional industrial components. Won most of the challenge rounds.

Design functional industrial parts across four additive processes, each with different material constraints, tolerances, and post-processing requirements, under competition time pressure and without a team.

• Solo entry against company-sponsored teams of 3 or more with dedicated tooling resources
• Each challenge round used a different process. No single design approach carried across all categories.
• Every submitted part had a functional test: geared mechanisms needed to mesh, and pipe manifolds had to survive welding loads

• Prioritized design for the specific process over material optimization. The right geometry for SLS is different from SLM even with similar alloys.
• Geared mechanism tolerances tightened beyond default process specs to ensure actual engagement after post-processing shrinkage
• Pipe manifold wall thickness and joint geometry were driven by weld heat input and the printing process together

1. 01

   Challenge brief analysis: identify which process constraints dominated each task

2. 02

   Rapid CAD iteration within competition time limits

3. 03

   Design review against process-specific failure modes before submission

• Additive process selection is a design decision, not a manufacturing detail. Geometry that prints well in FDM can be structurally wrong for the same part in SLM.
• A clean surface finish did not matter if a part failed its fit or load check. I began each round by working backward from the functional test.