Recent advances in 3D printing are opening doors for innovative breakthroughs in manufacturing. As a response, the U.S. Department of Energy partnered with Freelancer.com to launch the Manufacturing Innovator Challenge. This is a series of crowd-sourcing efforts to generate ideas to improve energy usage and strengthen the American manufacturing industry. You can read more about it below:

Naturally, this was right up my alley, and one challenge caught my interest in particular: Additive Manufacturing for Disaster Response. This challenge was intended to address the destructive effects of natural disasters on infrastructure in the U.S. using large-scale 3D printing. By large-scale, we’re talking 50’ x 25’ x 25’ with a material output rate of 1,000 lb/hr.

A printer like that might sound like a pipe dream, but Ingersoll Machine Tools, Inc. and Oak Ridge National Laboratories announced development of a similar printer earlier in 2018, called WHAM (Wide and High Additive Manufacturing). Incidentally, the WHAM project is also supported by the DOE, intended to open up additive manufacturing to new markets and applications (such as disaster relief). You can learn more about WHAM below:

After spending several days thinking through a few different ideas for a contest entry, I settled on 3D printable power distribution poles. In hurricanes, it’s not unusual for hundreds, or even thousands, of power poles to be damaged by the heavy wind loads and falling trees. Traditional wooden power poles are not always available in the quantities needed to rebuild power distribution infrastructure in a timely manner, so a design that the WHAM or a similar printer could churn out on-site after a disaster could be a big deal.

There were a lot of design constraints. It needed to be cost effective, light weight, strong, weather-resilient, and stiff enough to prevent excessive deflection. Also, it was important to be able to print them fast enough to be a practical replacement for wooden poles.

There were a ton of really awesome, creative entries to the contest, and the competition was a little bit intimidating. In the end, my entry was selected as one of the 3 winners of the contest, along with Anne Pauley and Stephen Stelly.

Anne entered 3D Printing Water Systems Using Recycled PET, which was a really cool solution for clean water in a disaster scenario. Stephen entered Temporary Patch and Repair System, an innovative 3D printable system for repairing broken power poles. Obviously, I wasn’t the only one thinking about the power pole problem, so it was really cool to see another approach to that as well.

It was a huge honor to be recognized in this contest and having the opportunity to be involved in this effort to strengthen manufacturing in America. Thanks, Freelancer.com and U.S. Department of Energy! The Manufacturing Innovator Challenge was a really cool experience.