At last week's IDTechEx Show! in Berlin, Additive Industries were presented with the 'Best Development in 3D Printing' Award.
Their submission on the 'World's first integrated metal 3D printed part removal' was chosen by the judges whose comments included: "As part of an already established metal AM ecosystem, this module eliminates some of the most tiresome and time consuming manual elements of the often-overlooked post processing stage. Automating this stage will dramatically improve production rate, reliability and repeatability to a technology where all of these key aspects of production are currently problematic."
Bart Leferink, International Business Executive - Director Global Channel Sales, Additive Industries, collected the award and commented: "We are delighted to receive this prestigious IDTechEx Award for the World's first integrated Product Removal Module! In this Module our team has succeeded to combine residual powder removal, part cutting and build plate resurfacing into the integrated additive manufacturing workflow. The integration of automated part removal in the complete industrial additive manufacturing workflow reduces the product cost for series production applications in high-end and demanding markets."

Lorenzo Grande, IDTechEx and Bart Leferink, Additive Industries
We were also thrilled to welcome 40+ academic poster presentations to the show. The winner of the 'Best Poster' Award went to a collaboration between the Manchester School of Art and Digits2Widgets - 'Digital Interlooping: 3D Printing of weft-knitted textile based tubular structures using selective laser sintering of nylon powder.'
Author and Senior Lecturer Textiles in Practice at MMU, Mark Beecroft said: "Interlooped is a design project currently in the development stages. To have the originality and technical aspect of the work recognised by ID Tech Ex is very rewarding. Exhibiting at the event and talking to industry professionals has been really useful to help identify future applications of the work"
Jonthan Rowley from Digits2Widgets commented: "It was wonderful to have the project recognised by such a respected organisation and underlines what we feel is a really creative and purposeful project. With this encouragement, we look forward to further developments."

Best Poster- Lorenzo Grande, IDTechEx; Mark Beecroft, MMU; Jonathan Rowley, Digits2Widgets