Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture (VCEA) is excited to announce the first ever student contest to design 3D-printed trophies for the VCEA Student Excellence Awards. The winning trophy will be 3D-printed by The FIZ and presented to the three VCEA Overall Students at the 2024 VCEA Student Excellence Awards.
This is an opportunity to start a tradition for the VCEA Student Excellence Awards and set the bar high for future designs. Submit more than one design and let your creativity shine!
Prizes
The winning designer will receive:
- An Anycubic Kobra 2 Neo 3D Printer
- Recognition at the 2024 VCEA Student Excellence Awards
- A 3D-printed copy of their award
- Recognition across VCEA social media channels
Who Can Enter?
The contest is open to all students with a major within the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture. They must be enrolled in class(es) for spring 2024. Each entry must be entirely original work of the person named in the entry. This contest is not open to anyone employed, past or present, as a professional in 3D printing.
How Do I Enter?
Entries should be submitted via the VCEA Awards Design Contest Portal.
Deadline is 11:59 pm, Friday, March 15, 2024.
Who Will Be Judging The Designs?
All submissions will be pre-screened by a team of FIZ managers and employees for content, design feasibility, and design specs. All submissions passing this check will be presented to VCEA students for voting on March 26 – March 28. Highest vote total will win. Winner will be announced on March 29.
Design Requirements
Dimensions
- No larger than 5″ tall x 5″ wide x 5″ deep.
Required elements
- Flat surface on bottom of design of 4″ x 4″ (for attachment of the trophy to a wooden base).
- If including WSU logo, please follow the guidelines from WSU Branding.
- Design must be printable and able to withstand travel and light handling (not too fragile or breakable).
File Format
- MUST be submitted in an STL format. No other formats will be accepted.
- Multiple files may be uploaded if design includes separate attachments or moving parts.
Tips For Designing
Guidelines for design when planning to 3D Print:
- No unsupported geometry. Because printers build up in layers of molten plastic, it is of vital importance that there is an orientation for your design in which there are no floating pieces of the model. A 3D printer can comfortably print at a 45 degree overhang. Beyond 45 degrees, print quality begins to rapidly suffer, and it becomes much more difficult to have a successful print. In addition to this, things which are unsupported, like a cloak blowing in the wind, are unprintable without supports, which will reduce the quality of the print. Especially if they have other material below them with a gap.
- Wall thickness. There is a distinct limit to how narrow a 3D Printer is capable of printing. Anything with details smaller than around a millimeter will fail to show, and if the width of a piece is under about 1.2 millimeters, the print will be extremely fragile, and prone to failure.
- Orientation of print. As mentioned before, you should think of the orientation an object is intended to be printed from while designing it. Optimally, you should reduce overhanging and unsupported geometry as much as possible. Bulk solids print well, spindly bits won’t. Furthermore, if you have an orientation in mind, remember that the sides (relative to print orientation) will be higher resolution than the vertical resolution. So if you print, say, a Volkswagen Beetle from the wheels down, the top of the roof will have a blocky texture due to the sequential stacking of layers.
- Bed adhesion. This may sound complicated, but in reality it’s quite simple. To begin a print, there will be a layer on a plate. The entire print will be stuck in place through this layer, If this area is too small, the print will need supports, or it will fail. Since this reduces print quality, it should be avoided. To paint a picture, a ballerina spinning on her toes will be a very difficult print, where a person sitting cross legged would be much easier.
- Size. The printers which we have can comfortably print objects which fit inside of a 220 mm cube, anything larger than this will require the use of a less reliable printer, and should be avoided if possible.
- “Bridging.” 3D printers have a limited capability to print between posts and similar geometry. The longer something gets while unsupported, the worse the print will look, and at a certain point will fail.