We are proud to announce the 2021 winners of the 3D Printing Industry Awards…
The 3D Printing Industry Awards returned in full force to highlight and champion the outstanding companies and people in our industry.
As voted for by our readers, the Awards represent the best hardware, software, and materials of the past year, the most innovative applications, and exceptional companies and individuals within additive manufacturing. As ever, the awards were hotly contested, with over 140,000 votes received on the shortlists.
Held completely online this year, over 3,000 people have watched the live stream of the Awards on our YouTube channel.
Read on to find out who won, and for comment from this year’s winners of the 2021 3D Printing Industry Awards. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners, and thank you to all those who voted. You can also watch the 2021 3D Printing Industry Awards replay by heading to our YouTube channel – make sure to subscribe.
Innovation of the Year – Shortlist
6K’s UniMelt microwave-based technology
A*STAR SIMTech Laser Aided Additive Manufacturing (LAAM)
EOS Laser ProFusion
John Whitehead and Hod Lipson’s inverted multi-material laser sintering
ETH Zurich’s Eggshell 3D printing
Meltio multi-material 3D printing
Azul 3D’s High Area Rapid Printing (HARP)
WINNER: 3D Systems’ Print to Perfusion bioprinting platform
Innovation of the year: 3D Systems’ Print to Perfusion bioprinting platform
Scott Turner, VP Advanced Systems at 3D Systems, said: “I’m so thankful to all of those that voted for this, and Martine Rothblatt [Founder of United Therapeutics] who came together to take on the challenge of 3D printing organs, a daunting task at best, and to let us invent a technology that we feel like we’re on the path today to doing this. We are so happy to be recognized.”
Aerospace, Automotive, Energy – Shortlist
WINNER: 3D Systems’ RF filter for Airbus aerospace
3t AM & Aston Martin
AON3D & Astrobotic’s Peregrine Moon Lander
BAC Mono – Ultimaker
Burloak Technologies & Safran titanium landing gear
Neutron 3D printed launch vehicle by Rocket Lab
CRP Technology & LISA laboratory flight-ready 3U CubeSat
Marshall Aerospace and Stratasys
Aerospace, Automotive, Energy Award: 3D Systems’ RF filter for Airbus
Mike Shepard, VP Aerospace & Defense Segment at 3D Systems, said: “It was a tremendous collaboration with our team in Leuven, Belgium, with the airbus team and we’re extremely excited about RF passive applications in the future, so thank you very much.”
Medical, Dental, or Healthcare Application – Shortlist
Binder jet-based food printing – Creative Design and Additive Manufacturing Lab, University of Auckland
ACEO3D facial prosthetics
Sintratec and AFSP
Swansea University 3D printed ear cartilage
WINNER: The Satchi-Fainaro Lab, Tel Aviv University, 3DCanPredict ERC project, 3D bioprinted glioblastoma model
Medical, Dental, or Healthcare Application of the Year: The Satchi-Fainaro Lab, Tel Aviv University, 3DCanPredict ERC project, 3D bioprinted glioblastoma model
Professor Ronit Satchi-Fainaro: “Thanks everyone for voting for us and thank you for the recognition and the great honor of receiving the 3D Printing Industry Award. This is great for myself and for the whole team at my lab at Tel Aviv University at the faculty of Medicine. We have a great multidisciplinary team led by Lena Neufeld, the PhD student in my lab, who worked together with many other students to develop a glioblastoma model, a very aggressive brain cancer, with perfusive blood vessels to develop a personalized medicine approach to predict which drug will fit which patient. So thank you very much, we really appreciate this.”
Academic, Research Team, or Project of the Year – Shortlist
Meso-Brain, Aston University
WINNER: Creative Design and Additive Manufacturing Lab, University of Auckland
Digital Reconfigurable Additive Manufacturing facilities for Aerospace, MTC, UK
Prof. Randy Erb and the DAPS Lab at Northeastern University
Avio Aero TAL and Apulia Repair Development Center Laboratories
Jennifer Lewis and the Lewis Lab at Harvard University
Academic, Research Team, or Project of the Year Award: Creative Design and Additive Manufacturing Lab, University of Auckland
Material Company of the Year – Shortlist
WINNER: Fillamentum
Material Company of the Year: Fillamentum
TÜV SÜD Sustainability in Additive Manufacturing – Shortlist
Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association (AMGTA)
Desktop Metal Forust Printer
EOS Responsible Manufacturing Initiative
NonOilen by Fillamentum
WINNER: Fishy Filaments
Liqcreate and Stenden University
Materialise Bluesint PA12
Siemens Energy AM row 1 turbine vanes
TWINE by Hagen Hinderdael, AI Build & Reflow
TÜV SÜD Sustainability in Additive Manufacturing Award: Fishy Filaments
Ian Falconer, CEO and Founder, said: “Massive thank you to all the voters and to all our shareholders, we have about 950 of them dotted around the world in 35 different countries. We are a child of crowdfunding, so we’re a grassroots organization, super small and driven by people’s genuine wishes rather than anything else.
“We’re really grateful for all the voters and all our shareholders, and also the fisherman for bringing their nets back in and doing their bit, thanks!”
Software Tool or Company of the Year – Shortlist
Autodesk Fusion 360
Autodesk Netfabb
Stratasys GrabCAD Print
Markforged Eiger
WINNER: Materialise Magics
Oqton’s ‘Additive’ AI platform
Software Tool or Company of the Year: Materialise Magics
Stefaan Motte, Vice President of Materialise Software, said: “Thanks to all of the voters, thanks for this great recognition. I think I speak for everyone when I say that it has been a really tough period with Covid and not being able to go out. I must say, in the past few months I am going out again, meeting customers, seeing what is happening with 3D printing on the shop floor, and it is always very rewarding to see Magics really ingrained within the processes and workflows of these champions of additive manufacturing and seeing how Magics enables them to do their magic.
“We continue to innovate, it’s great to see that all of our users are recognizing this thanks to this award, and it really proves that we are building the future of additive manufacturing together on these firm foundations that are magics, so thanks everyone.”
Desktop non-FFF 3D Printer of the Year – Shortlist
WINNER: Formlabs Form 3
Photocentric Liquid Crystal Precision 1.5
Desktop non-FFF 3D Printer of the Year: Formlabs Form 3
Creative Use of 3D Printing Award – Shortlist
WINNER: Adidas Futurecraft 4D (Carbon)
Avio Aero – Design for Additive Team
Carbon for the Specialized S-Works Power Saddle with Mirror Technology
University of Tübingen & Graz University of Technology elephant trunk robot
Lidewij van Twillert
Creative Use of 3D Printing Award: Adidas Futurecraft 4D (Carbon)
Erika Berg, Head of Application Development at Carbon, said: “I’m honored to be representing and thrilled to accept this award on behalf of our partner adidas for their creative use of Carbon DLS. We believe this to be one of the largest applications of 3D printing and we’re so excited to see the different ways that adidas has harnessed Carbon’s 3D technologies to develop better products in less time. We’re thrilled to be accepting this award so thank you very much for the recognition.”
Start-up of the Year Award – Shortlist
Digital Manufacturing Centre (DMC)
WINNER: Slice Engineering
Start-up of the Year Award: Slice Engineering
The Start-up of the Year Award was presented by Philip Schultheiss, Senior Associate at AM Ventures, which has been investing in early-stage companies for over six years, having encountered more than 2,000 start-ups in this time within the printing sector.
“Some of these have already grown into established players today, so we think this shows the great dynamic of our industry and the general drive in it,” he said. “We are convinced that start-ups play an important role in pushing the innovation and the market growth either with faster hardware and new materials, more intelligent software or by leveraging the advantages of AM for all kinds of new products.”
Daniel Barousse, CEO and Co-founder of this year’s Start-up of the Year Award, Slice Engineering, said: “This is fantastic, we’re very thrilled to be accepting this award. My Co-founder and I started this in a garage and so it’s very cool to now be on this global stage and be making an impact. We’re really excited about that, so thank you to 3DPI and the whole team there, and also to all the people that voted, thank you to the whole community, we’re very appreciative.”
Enterprise 3D Printer of the Year (Metals) – Shortlist
AddUp – FlexCare System
Desktop Metal Studio System
WINNER: EOS M290
GE Additive X Line
GEFERTEC Arc Series
Markforged Metal X System
Xerox ElemX
Velo3D Sapphire System
Sciaky EBAM
SLM Solutions NXG X11 600
Enterprise 3D Printer of the Year (Metals): EOS M290
EOS said: “We’re very honored that the M290 has been nominated and selected for this award by our users and our customers. We released the M290 in 2014 and have since installed over 1,000 M290s worldwide, making it the most popular metal AM system to date. We’re obviously very proud that our customers continue to recognize this machine as their go-to for mid-frame systems and that it has become the benchmark for quality in the additive manufacturing industry.
“One of our customers has described the M290 quite perfectly as being ‘boringly reliable’ so we thank you so much for your continued trust in our system and we look forward to continuing to provide our customers with the right tool for their production.”
Enterprise 3D Printer of the Year (Polymers) – Shortlist
BCN3D Epsilon
WINNER: Carbon L1
Desktop Metal Fiber
EOS P 500
Stratasys J850
HP MJF 5200
Makerbot METHOD X
Markforged X7
Enterprise 3D Printer of the Year (Polymers): Carbon L1
A Carbon spokesperson said: “I really appreciate accepting this award on behalf of Carbon. I want to thank the 3D Printing Industry Awards not only for this entire process but for managing this virtual event, it can’t be easy but I really appreciate the efforts especially during the pandemic. I also want to thank all of the voters out there for this recognition.
“The L1 printer was originally developed in 2018 and used specifically for production scale elastomers. The award my colleague Erika accepted on behalf of our partner adidas [for the Futurecraft 4D] all of those midsole are printed on the L1. We went on to print our helmets, saddles and other elastomeric end-use products on the L1. More recently its been used for clear aligner thermoforming and that’s been fabulous, but most exciting in the past year we released the L1 for general availability for customers to do work on it, and it’s really amazing to see the L1 in the hands of creators everywhere, and it’s so exciting to see what our customers are using that platform for.”
3D Printing for a Better World Award – Shortlist
3DP4ME: 3D printing of hearing aids
Carbon and Resolution Medical
Advanced Manufacturing Crisis Production Response (AMCPR)
WINNER: EOS initiative 3D Printing Against Corona
GE9X engine turbine blades at Avio Aeros Cameri
Blue Tap’s water purification technology
Swiss MAM
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso and the University of Texas at El Paso’s artificial mini hearts
3D Printing for a Better World Award: EOS initiative 3D Printing Against Corona
Upon receiving the award, an EOS spokesperson said: “The 3D Against Corona platform was created in the shortest time to link people at any place together. Immediately it was fed with valuable information for available AM capacities and professional contacts to bring people together and to search demands and volumes to meet these upcoming needs.”
Outstanding Contribution to 3D Printing Award: Ralph Resnick
The Outstanding Contribution to 3D Printing Award is distinguished from the other categories as it is chosen by the 3D Printing Industry team, in consultation with our network. Previous winners include Founder of EOS Dr Hans Langer, Dr Adrian Bowyer, originator of the RepRap movement, and Fried Vancraen, founder and CEO of Materialise.
This year’s winner of the Outstanding Contribution to 3D Printing Award is Ralph Resnick, Founder of the US’ national 3D printing accelerator America Makes. Read more about Resnick’s time in the additive manufacturing sector here.
Upon winning the award, Resnick said: “It has been an outstanding career, and it has been the result of all the relationships that I have built up – all the people, the partners, the associates – that have really come together and are working to advance our industry and help out global manufacturing. I want to thank 3D Printing Industry for continuing this fantastic effort of recognizing key people and key organizations in our community and I congratulate everyone that is winning the awards and those that have been nominated.
“I want to thank you [Michael Petch – 3DPI’s Editor in Chief] for continuing to be a troubadour for additive manufacturing with the excellent publications that you put out and the events that you help organize and sponsor. Again, thank you to all for this recognition, it is very humbling and I will treasure it.”
Value-added Reseller of the Year Award – Shortlist
3D CRIAR
3DChimera
3DGBIRE
3DJake
3DZ
Tritech
VisionMiner
Additive X
WINNER: MatterHackers
iGo3D
Value-added Reseller of the Year Award: MatterHackers
Mara Hitner, VP Strategic Partnerships at MatterHackers, said: “Thank you so much 3D Printing Industry, thank you to everybody that voted. It is the privilege of our lives at MatterHackers to serve this community, any time you need 3D printers and materials we are here for you, and we so appreciate that you appreciate that. I have to give a special shoutout to anybody out there that participated in our Maker Response Hub PPE efforts, the 15,000 3D printers that I know all of you were running at that time making a difference, thank you for contributing to that effort.
“MatterHackers hopes to be here for you for many years to come – our educators, our government, our military customers, our Etsy shops, our major corporations, our small businesses, we love being here for you with content, machines and materials, and continuing to follow the industry and be a provider for whatever you need.”
3D Scanning or Metrology Company of the Year – Shortlist
Artec 3D
Calibry – Thor3D
Creaform
FARO
GOM
Hexagon
Peel3D
WINNER: Scan The World MyMiniFactory (STW Photogrammetry)
Nikon Metrology
Shining 3D
3D Scanning or Metrology Company of the Year: Scan The World and Google Arts & Culture
Jon Beck, Founder of Scan The World, said: “Thank you to everyone for nominating us, Scan The World really stands for its work with the community, making art accessible to everyone around the world, so it’s a testament that it’s coming back to us. So, big thank you to everybody, and it is lovely working with all the other scanning manufacturers who are out there nominated and congratulations to everyone else who was nominated and awarded.”
Company of the Year (Enterprise) – Shortlist
3D Systems
AddUp
WINNER: Autodesk
Carbon
Desktop Metal
EOS
GE Additive
HP
Markforged
Materialise
Company of the Year (Enterprise): Autodesk
Paul Sohi of Autodesk said: “It’s always a joy to be here with 3D Printing Industry and working with you all. Thank you to everyone who voted for us, it means the world to us. We are constantly working on making even better workflows in additive, and it is always a pleasant surprise and a joy to win an award like this, so thank you again everyone.”
Company of the Year (Personal) – Shortlist
3DGBIRE
3DGence
WINNER: Prusa Research
BCN3D Technologies
Dyze Design
E3D Online
Formlabs
Lulzbot
Lumi Industries
Slice Engineering
Company of the Year (Personal): Prusa Research
Josef Prusa, CEO & Founder, said: “I would like to thank our wonderful community for bringing us here. It always feels like we are just at the start of what we can achieve, so it is wonderful and I am speechless.”
Desktop FFF 3D Printer of the Year – Shortlist
Anycubic Vyper
Artillery Sidewinder
Creality CP-01
Creality Ender 3 Pro
LulzBot Taz SideKick 747
Flashforge Adventurer 4
Trilab DeltiQ 2
WINNER: ORIGINAL PRUSA i3 MK3S
Desktop FFF 3D Printer of the Year: ORIGINAL PRUSA I3 MK3S
Prusa said: “So the Mark 3S Plus is on a roll and is proving to be unstoppable, because what we hear from our customers is that they have been using it for years and they still love it and are buying more and more. We have them in automotive because you can get 40 printers for the price of one of the bigger ones, and we have printed quarter of a million fascias just in our company using them.
“I’m very grateful that the Mark 3 is doing so well and I can’t wait for what the future will bring soon.”
Community Advocate of the Year Award – Shortlist
Eurico Assunção, IAMQS Coordinator
Gil Lavi, 3D Alliances
Mara Hitner, VP of Strategic Partnerships, MatterHackers
Matthew Griffin, Director of Community Development, Ultimaker
WINNER: Integza, YouTuber
Olaf Diegel, Professor of Additive Manufacturing, Creative Design and Additive Manufacturing Lab, University of Auckland
Peter Rogers, Autodesk
Prof Ho Chaw Sing, NAMIC Singapore
Stephan Henrich, Designer & Lecturer Robotic Design and Architecture
Uncle Jessy, YouTuber
Community Advocate of the Year Award: Integza
Integza said: “There’s a lot of companies here that have motivated me to get into 3D printing for a long time, for example, I have been using Autodesk Fusion 360 for a long time. I would also like to thank Clayton From Uncle Jessy, I’ve been using your PLA profile in Simplify 3D for years and it works perfectly. I would like the thank 3DPI [readers] for nominating me for this award, and most of all I would like to thank all my subscribers for the support and for voting for me, because without them this would never be possible.”
A replay of the live stream of the 2021 3D Printing Industry Awards is available to watch on our YouTube channel, and has already received more than 3,000 views. All of the winners will receive their trophy in due course, designed by James Novak, winner of the 2021 3D Printing Industry Awards Trophy Design Competition.
Congratulations once again to all of the winners and nominees, we look forward to welcoming you all in person to next year’s event.
The 3D Printing Industry Awards will return in 2022.
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Featured image shows 3D Printing Industry Awards 2021 logo.
