Aidro Hydraulics and Fraunhofer Win Design for Additive Manufacturing Challenge

Aidro Hydraulics and Fraunhofer Institute were announced as winners of the Additive World Design for Additive Manufacturing Challenge of Additive Industries during the awards dinner of the sixth Additive World Conference. All six finalists, three in the student category and three professionals, pitched their designs in front of the five-member jury. The awards, a set of gears and a hydraulic manifold, were for redesigns of common industrial parts where the impact of the design for additive manufacturing would be substantial.

In the student category the first prize went to Yogeshkumar Katrodiya, an Indian student finalizing his master's study at the Fraunhofer Institute in Augsburg, Germany. Katrodiya designed a fully integrated shaft and gear with internal channels transporting lubricant to the gears for cooling.  The helix-shaped cooling channels were applied to increase the cooling capacity and they demonstrated the design freedom of metal additive manufacturing.  With help of part consolidation and topology optimization, Katrodiya obtained a weight reduction of 50%. Decisive for the jury was the generic applicability and the number of potential applications for his design.

The winner of the professional category was Aidro Hydraulics of Italy, headed by Alberto Tacconelli. Aidro CEO Valeria Tirelli presented their compact redesign of a generic hydraulic manifold for a street cleaning vehicle, designed by Gaetano Corrado. The redesign consolidated two parts, is smaller than its predecessor and has an optimized flow because of improved, curved channels. Moreover, the problem of leakage, caused by auxiliary plug failure, is eliminated and the weight is reduced by 70%. The applicability and commercial viability of the design impacted the jury.

All finalists received a free one-year license of Altair Inspire and Autodesk Netfabb software. Katrodiya, as student winner, took home an Ultimaker 2+ printer while the team of Aidro Hydraulics won an Ultimaker 3.

For more information, visit Additive Industries.

Sources: Press materials received from the company.