The 2014 National Collegiate Inventors Competition will see two finalist teams from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The projects of the two teams involve 3D Printing and chemical mixing technologies.

Variable Color 3D Printing

Spectrom attaches to 3D Printers and enables color printing. It dyes clear plastic using a continuous process on demand. This process will therefore allow variable 3D Printing on a single project run.

The project was dreamed up by computer engineering student Taylor Fahey and chemical engineering students Charles Haider and Cedric Kovacs-Johnson. Mechanical engineering professors Tim Osswald, Kuo K. and Cindy F. Wang served as advisors.

According to Haider, "3D printing is pretty much a monochromatic industry right now, so you can only print in one color at a time … What people have done are workaround solutions that don't solve the true problem at hand."

Kovacs-Johnson added, "We now know the core technology to color is there. That works … We'd like to show that color is not just a feature - it enables you to do so much more. Our next steps are about determining what people actually want to make in color, and how we provide the tools for them to use our tool."

Haider also commented that the simplification of 3D Printing is the key to bringing custom products to the average consumers. The realization of the possibilities are endless when people learn what they can make on a 3D Printer.

Spectrom has won various state and campus competitions. It is also a beneficiary of U of Wisconsin’s Discovery to Product program. The program helps students bring projects from pre-commercialization to marketability.

Improved Static Mixing

New geometry introduced by the Remex Static Mixer team promises a more delicate and efficient mixing process. The team consists of mechanical engineering student Eric Ronning, material science and engineering student Will Doniger, and nuclear engineering student Brian Pekron. Thomas Mackie, Director of Medical Engineering at the Morgridge Institute for Research, served as their advisor.

Using counter-top blenders as an example, Ronning explains, “Blenders are great for whipping up strawberry shakes; however, you can expect you'll destroy all of your fruit in the process … Current static mixers are too violent when mixing delicate fluids. ... (M)any industries are stunted by their mixing processes."

The Remex design, however, uses less pressure and almost doubles the efficiencies of current mixers. The design was based on theories for efficient mixing and shear stress reduction. An optimized container shape was determined mathematically before being modeled and tested.

As Mackie explains, "It was pointed out that this mathematical shape was theoretically the best and impossible to make … But, in fact, you can make it - with 3-D printers. The most serendipitous innovations come when you're colliding together two things. In this case, it was a knowledge of both the theory and the practical details to implement it."

Ronning added, "It means you can do things you couldn't otherwise do … The hope is that this design can mix reactants that would otherwise be too fragile, like recombinant protein therapies where live cells are mixed together."

The winners of the competition will be announced on November 17^th at Alexandria, Virginia’s US Patent and Trademark Office. Winners will receive a cash prize of $100,000 and the chance to network with America’s top innovation brass.

The remaining finalists include:

Johns Hopkins’s AccuSpine for continuous screw placement feedback during spinal surgery
Harvard’s Ferrotouch for graphical representations for the blind
Columbia Engineering’s TKAone for early warning knee surgery infection notifications
U of North Carolina’s volumetric measuring and drug delivery system
Clemson University’s Insita Pro, an arthroscopic surgery tool to repair rotator cuffs

Source U of Wisconsin