Mark Chester (LinkedIn)
In February 2023, 3DGBIRE and the CREATE Education Project announced that they had partnered with WorldSkills UK to launch a new additive manufacturing competition, aimed at post-16 students in education and training. The competition is designed to test young people’s 3D design, 3D printing, and 3D scanning skills, and is sponsored by UltiMaker and Shining 3D. The first edition of the competition concluded in the national finals on November 15 and 16 at the University of Salford in Manchester.
In this first edition of the competition, nearly 90 young people from colleges and apprenticeship providers across the UK signed up to take part. With the number of applications being higher than anticipated according to the organisers, students were asked to take part in an online entrance skills test. The skills test consisted of timed questions relating to 3D printing, alongside a series of design tasks using Autodesk Fusion360 design software.
Speaking about how the UK competition came about, Steven Taylor, Technical Trainer at 3DGBIRE and CREATE Education Ambassador, told TCT: “I joined 3DGBIRE back in 2020, and prior to that I’d worked at an Autodesk distributor and I’d actually got going the digital construction competition for WorldSkills UK, so when I came to 3DGBIRE and moved into the additive manufacturing realm, I found it interesting that there wasn’t actually a competition for additive manufacturing. There was quite a new competition globally, but at that time WorldSkills UK hadn’t adopted it into its portfolio of competitions. So, I reached out to WorldSkills UK, having known some of the team there and said, 'obviously additive manufacturing is a technology that lots of organisations are adopting, it’s the future and there is a skill shortage in that area, what do you think about us setting up a competition in the UK?'”
From the entrance test stage of the competition, 32 students were invited to take part in three National WorldSkills UK Qualifiers held in June 2023, and hosted at Cheshire College South and West, University of Sheffield, and Imperial College London. At the qualifiers, students were set a design and 3D printing task to complete using an UltiMaker 3D printer. The top eight competitors from the National Qualifiers were invited to take part in the WorldSkills UK National Finals at the University of Salford in Manchester in November 2023, with the winners at the finals set to be part of the UK squad taking part in the WorldSkills event in Lyon, France in 2024.
Speaking about the long term goals of the competition, Taylor told TCT: “What we want is for the UK to have the best young additive manufacturing engineers, my goal is to get our youngsters into the WorldSkills arena to compete with the best of the best on a global scale, and put us on the map.”
Speaking to TCT about the importance of the competition, Taylor said: “One of the things I find when we’re selling the new technologies is that people haven’t necessarily got the skills they need in the current teams, or they need to develop the skills in their teams. A lot of industries are employing graduates and people coming fresh from college and university that have potentially had exposure to these technologies in their educational environment, so this is to raise the profile of additive manufacturing technologies within the educational institutions and help to drive the skills agenda in this area.”
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Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.
Taylor also told TCT his view on what the UK Government can do to improve additive manufacturing skills in the country: “There’s no real sort of apprenticeship in additive manufacturing. We’ve done a lot of enquiries when we’re going out to industry and doing face to face training, a lot of people are asking if there are any qualifications specific to this or any certifications. Now as a company we can give our own certification, but it’s not recognised by any official organisation. So, some sort of formal certification from this would be ideal. We’re currently looking at the potential of a trailblazer group for an apprenticeship, but also what you find is because it’s such a broad arena, what you’re doing in additive manufacturing complements qualifications already out there. So its about keeping up with that and trying to get more of an emphasis within these institutions of, don’t just train them on a CNC machine or traditional hand tools, additive manufacturing is coming and they need to know how to reverse engineer, get hands on with scanners, they need to see these new technologies that are out there and use them.”
Steven Taylor/3DGBIRE
Steven Taylor, Technical Trainer at 3DGBIRE and CREATE Education Ambassador.
This article originally featured in TCT Magazine EU 31.6.
At the finals of the inaugural event in November, the eight finalists used various 3D printers, scanners and software: the UltiMaker S5 with Cura; Autodesk Fusion 360 with Generative design; SHINING 3D's 3D Einscan Hx; and 3D Systems' Design X.
Various judges for the competition took to LinkedIn to speak about the success of the event, Mark Chester, Product Development Specialist at MMU's PrintCity said: "The judges and I were absolutely blown away by the quality of the competitors. It was so difficult to determine the winners."
Chester also commented: "The future of AM looks bright!"
Steve Cox, 3D Technologies Consultant & Trainer at AMFORi added: "Eight excellent finalists who gave it everything over two days of competition, covering the full design creation, reverse engineering, scanning and generative design inputs required to produce the 3D printing outcomes."
Ben Mitchell, Training and Development Operator - BAE Air said: "As you can imagine, the judging process was a tough one and the quality of the work generated is truly a credit all finalists involved. Congratulations to all for making it this far."
Competition organiser Steven Taylor commented: "Looking forward to the future of Additive Manufacturing if the next generation have these skills."
