SME, Stratasys announce winners of 2023 SkillsUSA additive manufacturing competition

SME and Stratasys have announced the winners of their co-sponsored 2023 Additive Manufacturing Competition, conducted as part of the 59th annual SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference, held in Atlanta. The competition was supported this year by partner Autodesk.

The contest educates high school and postsecondary students about AM technologies and design and provides them with real-world, hands-on experience that they can apply to a commercial product. This year, teams from 30 high schools and eight colleges competed to win. More than 500 parts were printed during the three-day competition, all on Stratasys 3D printers.

This year’s competition challenged students to design and print parts to build an assembly that attached to a fixture with a rotating mount point to grab and hold three progressively more difficult objects. Then each team presented its process, engineering design notebook, and printed designs to the judges.

Both levels of the winning teams received gold, silver, and bronze medals from SkillsUSA, as well as scholarships of $1,500, $1,000, and $500, respectively, from the SME Education Foundation. Teams winning gold and silver medals also won a professional-grade Prusa MK3S and 3D printer kit donated by Printed Solid.

The following high school teams won medals:

• Gold Team: Johann Rafanan and Sabal Schuster, Nova High School (Davie, Fla.)
• Silver Team: Reggie May and Kyra Sandahl, Payette River Technical Academy (Emmett, Idaho)
• Bronze Team: Alejandro Colon and Daniel Hulse, West-MEC Northwest Campus (Surprise, Ariz.)

• Gold Team: Dallin Hansen and Tom Swindler, Utah Valley University (Orem, Utah)
• Silver Team: Armand Carlo Agbulos and Cody Buchanan, Madison Area Technical College (Madison, Wis.)
• Bronze Team: David Atess and James McBride, Meridian Technology Center (Stillwater, Okla.)