The winners of the Formnext Awards 2024

Following the evaluation of the jury and public voting, the following winners were presented with their awards at a ceremony on November 21: Axolotl Biosciences (Start-up Award), Oryx Medicals (Rookie Award), Fraunhofer IGCV ((R)Evolution Award), Siemens / joint project 3D-PROCESS (Design Award), Ceratizit (Sustainability Award) and AM of Bones, University of Stuttgart (AMbassador Award).

The Formnext Awards honor young innovative companies, sustainable business ideas and groundbreaking technologies. The finalists in each category were communicated online in advance and also presented themselves at the trade fair so that the Formnext audience could vote for their favorites on site and digitally. The public vote counted just like the vote of a jury member. The trophies were designed by Sutosuto and produced and sponsored by Voxeljet. Other award sponsors are 3D Printing Industry, AM Ventures, cirp, Renishaw and Trumpf.

Start-up Award

Axolotl Biosciences won the Start-up Award supported by AM Ventures, which recognizes inspiring young companies with viable business models. The Canadian company has developed TissuePrint, a research-grade, xeno-free bio-ink for 3D printing of human tissue models. According to the company, the ink can be used with a variety of sensitive cells and retains more than 90 percent of cellular viability after printing.

Jury member Arno Held, Managing Partner of AM Ventures, was also impressed by the exceptional innovations of this year's Start-up Award finalists: "The ground-breaking entries are not only setting new standards in additive manufacturing, but are also shaping the future of the industry with fresh, transformative ideas."

Rookie Award

Oryx Medicals is the winner of the Rookie Award, which honors individuals with promising business ideas who have not yet founded their company or who founded it less than a year ago. The young team has developed an innovative, additively manufactured aortic valve. This is set to revolutionize the treatment of aortic valve stenosis. The product is a 3D-printed, patient-specific mechanical heart valve that combines the longevity of conventional mechanical valves with the advantages of the minimally invasive procedure of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI).

The quality of the entries in the highly competitive Rookie Award also impressed jury member Alex Kingsbury, Market Development Manager Additive Manufacturing at nLight. "Additive manufacturing is in a state of flux and I was pleasantly surprised by the high caliber of these new faces and companies. I can't wait to follow their further developments.

Sustainability Award

The Sustainability Award supported by Renishaw recognizes AM applications and products beyond the pure production process based on their product life cycle. The 2024 winner is Ceratizit. The company, which specializes in cutting tools and hard material solutions, has developed a unique process for the binder- and sinter-based additive manufacturing of hard metals. Ceratizit has determined that 91% of the raw material can be saved compared to conventional production and that the CO2 footprint can be reduced by 95%. "It shows that the topic of sustainability has arrived with force in the industry," says jury member Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kristian Arntz, Professor of Manufacturing Technologies and Machine Tools at FH Aachen, University of Applied Science. "It was also particularly remarkable how professionally many of the submissions for the Sustainability Award were able to demonstrate their real contribution through a life cycle analysis."

Design Award

Siemens / joint project 3D-Process convinced the jury with extraordinary AM designs and won the Design Award supported by cirp.

The company presented an innovative reactor design that is intended to ensure greater sustainability in the chemical industry. The reactor system is designed for the synthesis of chemicals for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and, according to Siemens, achieves energy savings of up to 50%. At the same time, around 50% less solvent is required than in the conventional process.

Jury member Oliver Tessmann, Professor Digital Design Unit, TU Darmstadt: "I was impressed by the fact that social relevance played such a major role in the Formnext Awards, over and above the technological aspects!"

(R)Evolution Award

The Fraunhofer Institute for Casting, Composite and Processing Technology IGCV has won the (R)Evolution Award supported by 3D Printing Industry. The award recognizes pioneering products, technologies or services that offer particular added value for the user.

The IGCV convinced the jury with its project "Three Material Powder Bed Fusion of Battery Cell Cap Housing". This is a patent-pending three-material processing technique using powder bed fusion that enables battery cell housings made of aluminum, copper and ceramic to be manufactured in a single production step. This innovative approach enables the production of geometrically complex housings and offers unparalleled flexibility in design and production. The process is particularly suitable for the production of small batches, allowing cell developers to quickly adapt their designs in the early stages of development without having to invest in new tools. This flexibility is crucial for the rapid development of next-generation battery cells, where fast prototyping and design adjustments are essential.

The innovation also impressed jury member Dr. Maximilian Binder, Additive Manufacturing Expert, BMW Group: "The manufacturing concept has the potential to open up completely new fields of application in additive manufacturing and outshines other known multi-material processes through a very targeted and efficient use of materials."

AMbassador Award

The AMbassador Award recognizes outstanding individuals or organizations who have made a unique impact on the industry and users through innovative training and education approaches or their personal advocacy. The 2024 winner is AM of Bones, University of Stuttgart .

The University of Stuttgart, together with dentists from Freiburg University Hospital, has developed innovative dental bone grafts for use in the treatment of bone defects. The project involves the formulation of novel ceramic-filled resins and the design of high-precision bone implants optimized for DLP stereolithography. The project also includes post-processing, including the cleaning of intricate trabecular pores, to produce defect-free, pure ceramic implants.

Jury member Ralf Anderhofstadt, Head of Center of Competence Additive Manufacturing (3D-Printing), Printing Shop & Media - Daimler Trucks & Buses, was "very impressed by how many great ideas were received from the pioneers of AM for our AMbassador Award and the high level of maturity of the great entries from both individuals and organizations." Overall, the Formnext Awards were characterized by a large number of outstanding submissions and a high level of voting participation.