Funding, Grants & Awards

Winners Chosen for 2017 SkillsUSA Additive Manufacturing Competition

• By Sri Ravipati
• 07/19/17

The third annual Additive Manufacturing Competition for college and high school students in the United States recently concluded at the 53rd annual SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference (June 19-23) in Louisville, KY.

More than 16,000 students, teachers, industry professionals and others attended the SME and Stratasys-hosted conference this year, which was a showcase of career and technical education (CTE) students participating in SkillsUSA. Since 1965, the national nonprofit of students, teachers and industry leaders has worked to ensure America has a skilled workforce.

“SME created the Additive Manufacturing Contest for SkillsUSA with the main objective to attract more students to careers in manufacturing through an emerging technology and to advance an increasingly relevant technology as more companies are looking for workers to hire with skills in this technology,” the contest guidelines explain.

Thirty-four high school and post-secondary student teams competed for gold, silver and bronze medals, scholarships from the SME Education Foundation and a MakerBot Mini printer, according to a news release. Participants were tasked with designing and printing “a track piece (fixture) capable of moving a marble to a designated location after the ball rolled down a ramp. The fixture needed to connect to the ramp at certain connection points and remain stable for the duration of the test.” After designing the fixture, they built a prototype on a Stratasys 3D printer. Some participated in a mini-challenge that asked them to fix broken files within an STL file and present their findings to a panel of additive manufacturing professionals.

The 2017 high school winners are:

• Gold Medal: Cameron McLaughlin and Matthew Marinelli from Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School (Marlborough, MA);
• Silver Medal: Andrew Schalk and Braden Clayberg from Stafford Senior High School (Falmouth, VA); and
• Bronze Medal: Andrew Daddone and Trevor Wheelock from Frederick County Career & Technology Center (Frederick, MD).

At the collegiate level, the winners are:

• Gold Medal: Collin Goddes, Thomas Houston from Calhoun Community College (Decatur, AL);
• Silver Medal: James Bruce, Mattias Anderson from Butte College (Oroville, CA); and
• Bronze Medal: Amadeo Verstegen, Timothy Myers from Madison Area Technical College (Madison, WI).

Track files of the winning teams' designs can be found here.