Intro
Welcome to the Meltzone – Contest,
this is our first contest to push the design of hotends in additive Manufacturing!
This contest is open to anyone, doesn’t matter if you are an inventor, researcher or already a manufacturer of hotends. You will have time until the end of march 2025 to pitch (more infos below) your design, after that we (my team and me) will pick 3-5 winners that will have their design printed for free!
We only have one pre-condition, after the design made by Chris (see Inspiration) which is highly optimized, but after some discussion we decided it would be better to use a hard steel tube as base part. With this the filament flow is improved over the polished and hardend inner surface.
We will add an FAQ and some basic information about the print process, the materials available and anything else that comes up!
You can contact us over our blog@ e-mail address if you have any questions, this way we have an easier time filtering all the input:
blog@3ddruckbyteufel.de
Overview
Timeline
- November 2024 -> March 2025
Prep and Pitch Phase, ask questions and design your hotend. Write a small pitch deck about your design. Send us your pitch deck! - April – May
Design selection for us. We hope to give regular updates on our progress and might ask question that came up. - June – August/September
The finalist designs get printed and shipped to the designers. If approved by the designers we would also love to post about the winners and your designs!!
Inspiration
This design, was made by Chris and the inspiration for this contest, motivated by the huge feedback about the LinkedIn Post about it.
Thank you Chris!
Always remember that you can print nearly any metal in a Three-Dimensional space with our 5-Axis metal printer!
Pitch Deck
The Pitch Deck is supposed to be a simple overview of the design that highlights its special features and possible specs. Anything from a basic sketch to a renders from 3d-model or simulations goes. We know that different levels of tech are accessible to different people and we try to do our best to evaluate each design at face-value to give everyone a fair chance.
The Pitch Deck should not be over-bloated in volume but we wont limit the amount of pages, just keep in mind that we are just 3 people.
It should contain any visualisation of the design and a CAD-Modell would be appreciated but in the first round isn’t required but we will ask for it in the latter rounds of eliminations.
We also wont share your designs in anyway or form so please refrain from sending us NDAs in the early phase but we also understand that you want to protect your work.
But if required by your institution please contact us about it!
Printprocess
This is a direct visualisation of the print process made by ODeCon engineering GmbH:
We will soon add more details about available metals and tolerances for a sum of sample designs that might be needed. For example, free standing walls, surface finish roughness, …
FAQs
Coming soon!