UNIQUE IDEAS SHINE IN THE 2010 ALUMINUM EXTRUSION DESIGN COMPETITION

The ET Foundation?s (Wauconda, IL) recent 2010 Aluminum Extrusion Design Competition received more than 100 entries from students and professionals competing for $18,500 in scholarships and cash awards. The competition, which included a Student Class and Professional Class, featured a number of new ideas and unique applications for extruded aluminum components. Nearly 100 of the entries received were from students studying design and engineering at colleges, universities, and high schools around the world. A Grand Prize, two Professional Class awards, and several Student Class scholarships, including the Hydro Sustainable Design, Award were given.

Judges for the competition included David Asher, General Manager for Bonnell Aluminum in Kentland, IN; Dr. Joseph Benedyk, Research Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL, and Editor for Light Metal Age magazine; Lynn Brown, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Hydro Aluminum in Linthicum, MD; and Craig Werner, owner of Werner Extrusion Solutions, LLC in Lake Forest, IL.

GRAND PRIZE
For only the second time in the history of the competition the Grand Prize was awarded to a student entry. Eric Eisele, a Materials Engineering graduate student at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA, won for his design of an extruded hanging LED light fixture, earning him a $3,500 scholarship. Eisele designed the fixture specifying 6063-T5 aluminum, which, he explained, ?offers a good balance between ease of extrusion, machinability, and thermal conductivity. LED light fixtures must properly dissipate the heat generated by LEDs to ensure high efficiency and long life.?

In his entry, Eisele outlined the benefits of using extruded aluminum for his LED lighting application. ?Integrated designs can include heatsink fins, slots, optical cavities, mounting rails, [screw] bosses?all necessary for LED fixtures. Increased design integration reduces part count and cost,? Eisele noted. In addition, he pointed out that heat is dissipated throughout the entire light fixture.

The judges found the design to be a great example of how aluminum extrusions can gain ground in an emerging market.

?LED lights in commercial and residential space-lighting applications appear to be on the cusp of revolutionizing the whole lighting industry,? competition judge David Asher commented. ?These lights offer the potential of dramatic energy savings for equivalent light output. While they are very energy efficient, they are also very sensitive to heat and will suffer significant reduction in useful life if heat can?t be effectively dissipated. The concept of using an extruded fixture with integral heat sink, light placement options, and the potential to utilize different types of light diffusers and reflectors would appear to help with the commercialization of LED lighting.?

Competition judge Craig Werner added, ?There may be some technical challenges yet to overcome, but utilizing the light weight, strength, ability to extrude complex integral profiles, and heat conductivity of aluminum extrusions for this growth product was a great idea.?

PROFESSIONAL CLASS
Entries in the Professional Class for the competition reflected two categories: Structural and Engineered Products. Earning a $2,000 cash award in the Structural Category were Brian Boettger, Vice President of Product Development for SigmaDek Ltd. in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and Stephan Lachevrotiere, Industrial Designer for Precicad in Quebec, Canada. Their winning design was for the SigmaDek System, a unique residential component decking system that allows the deck to be built with very limited use of tools and fasteners. The new system utilizes components that click and slide together, thus reducing the time and skill required to build a deck.

Having to comply with the National Building Code standards, aluminum allowed us to easily obtain the strength we needed in our structural components. The use of the extrusion process also allowed us [to] optimize our cross sections where we needed more strength,? they explained in their entry. The deck is manufactured with aluminum extruded components including such parts as the ledger board assembly that connects the deck to the house, post beams and joists, pickets, and hand rail, as well as wood-plastic composite deck boards that make the deck system insect resistant, fire proof, and environmentally friendly.

Earning a $2,000 cash award for First Place in the Engineered Products category was Patrick Wetherill, a mechanical engineer for GMS International in Turtle Creek, PA. He won for his design of an Extruded Wedge for traditionally cooled generator rotors?an integrated cooling upgrade. Wetherill proposed an upgrade for an existing wedge used in power generation systems. According to the designer, there are thousands of applicable rotors in service across the globe, many of which are up to six-decades old, that utility companies routinely rely on to produce power.

Thousands of volts push thousands of amps through typical generation systems. Typical temperature ranges of windings reach 150-degrees Celsius, or 311-degrees Fahrenheit. Unchecked, this heat will escalate to levels that will destroy insulation and anneal the copper,? noted Wetherill. He further explained that wedges are aluminum blocks approximately 6-inches long held in the slots above the rotor windings, securely holding the copper against the rotor body. ?Typically, these wedges are extruded in a single piece with teeth on the sides which hold the wedge in place under the extreme [centrifugal] forces.? By extruding the wedge in a ?more sophisticated form? with voids incorporated in the extrusion to aid in further cooling and wings added to create a pressure differential, the new wedge can effectively enhance the stability, longevity, and reliability of thousands of turbo generators without sacrificing structural integrity or changing the existing cooling flow, according to Wetherill.

STUDENT CLASS

Students from 24 schools including 22 universities or technical colleges and two high schools submitted entries for the 2010 Aluminum Extrusion Design Competition. Scholarships in the form of cash awards were presented to the students who submitted winning entries, while Honorable Mentions were awarded to students who submitted other notable work. First Place with a $3,000 scholarship was awarded to Robert Sibley, an Industrial Design major from Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, for his Trestle sawhorse clamp. Sibley explained that although a sawhorse is nothing new, his design offers a durable, lightweight system that is easy to assemble and disassemble making it convenient and highly portable. ?The use of anodized extruded aluminum adds significantly to the perception of high quality, precision, and value,? noted Sibley.

Second Place with a $2,000 scholarship was awarded to Evan Frenz, majoring in Industrial Design at Purdue University for his HALT bicycle disk brake design. Frenz discovered while researching his design that although disk brakes are ?far superior? to other brake designs on the market, they are very expensive due to the processes involved in manufacturing. ?I found a very simple way to extrude the brake caliper housing and decided to build my design off of that,? explained Frenz. He incorporated fins into the design which dissipates heat caused by friction during braking, ?also the thick aluminum walls of the brake?s housing makes it strong and durable.?

Three Third Place awards were presented, each earning a $1,000 scholarship. Ryan Michaelis, a third-year Industrial Design student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada won for his design of Electrostatic Speakers, a type of audio speaker ?where sound is generated by a force exerted in a membrane suspended in an electrostatic field.? With the use of aluminum extrusions he was able to simplify the manufacturing and assembly process to create a simple but elegantly designed and more affordable speaker, according to the student. ?An honest design approach uses the extrusion profiles as a design feature; [the] cost-effective production process and ease of assembly reduce the market price of the speaker making it affordable to new customers,? Michaelis explained.

Young Do Kim, a junior studying Product Design at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea won for his ZigZag shoe display and storage system. The self-stacking system can be assembled without any fasteners or detailed instructions and is easily disassembled and stacked neatly in a small space, according to the student.
Alex Hill, a sophomore studying Industrial Design and Sports Movement Science at Purdue University, won a $1,000 scholarship for his ReNew rehabilitation and resistance system. ?I decided to merge my knowledge of both undergraduate programs to design a product that took advantage of all the benefits aluminum extrusion has to offer,? noted Hill. ?The ReNew system is light weight, simple to adjust and assemble, and easy to store.?

HYDRO SUSTAINABLE DESIGN AWARD
The Sustainable Design award was established by Hydro to foster innovative solutions to growing societal and/or environmental issues. ?Again this year, there were a number of quality entries,? commented Lynn Brown, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Hydro Extrusion Americas in Linthicum, MD, ?but one entry stood out for the way it addressed sustainability issues and the elegant simplicity of the design.? Hydro chose the Affordable Water Purification System submitted by Yasaman Sheri, a junior studying Product Design and Industrial Design at Carleton University, as this year?s winner of the Sustainable Design award, which earned her a $2,500 scholarship.

Her extruded aluminum design exploits many of the design possibilities inherent in the aluminum extrusion process. She uses a single profile to form both halves of the main compartment and integrates filter guides in the extrusion design so that minimal post-extrusion fabrication is needed. Her product is modular for easy customization and shipping, is simple to assemble in the field, recognizing the realities of the use environment, and can use local materials. The judges were also impressed with the quality of her presentation. Most importantly, her innovative water filtration/purification system addresses a critical need of third-world countries: easy and inexpensive access to clean drinking water.

?A second entry also addressed societal benefit and demonstrated a good understanding and application of extrusion design principles,? said Brown. Frederic Ford Leland, an Industrial Design major from Greenville Technical College in Greenville, SC, was awarded an Honorable Mention earning him a $500 scholarship for his Third World Housing Solution, a modular shelter and water collection system. The student explained that although the unit could be used in any impoverished area, his design was specifically created for a tropical climate where insulation is unnecessary, such as Mumbai, India.

Due to the nature of India?s intense Monsoon seasons, [the] unit has been outfitted with a flotation mechanism,? explained Leland. ?Not only does it provide a safe environment for personal possessions, but it provides a green solution that could save lives during flash and nighttime flooding.? He notes that the roof design is one of the greatest features of the product, with a built-in extruded gutter system that collects fresh rainwater. ?Many impoverished communities have no access to clean water, but with the ability to capture and recycle their own fresh water, [they] will have a higher chance of surviving the desolate conditions.?

———————————————————————————————–

www.etfoundation.org