This past month, we ran our first GrabCAD Shop Challenge! Participants were asked to create a functional tool that can be used in the real world — and especially, your 3D printing environment.

As usual, Community members blew us away with their entrees, and our judges were tasked with narrowing it down to five finalists. All of the finalists were then invited to submit their design entries to be 3D printed, using our new 3D printing shop management software: GrabCAD Shop.

“We wanted to give the Community a chance to see how helpful GrabCAD Shop is in an additive manufacturing environment,” says Kesa Lynch, GrabCAD Community manager. “In the past, we would 3D print and ship the challenge winners their design, but this time they got to experience the workflow from beginning to end.”

Collaborating in GrabCAD Shop

The Shop Challenge received a total of 85 entries. Once the judges narrowed it down to five finalists, only those five finalists were invited to the GrabCAD Challenge Shop, created specifically for this challenge.

GrabCAD Shop Product Manager, Anirudh Krishnakumar, personally trained the finalists on how to use the software (via Google Meet), including how to create a work order, how to select the color and material for their part, and how to collaborate within the work order.

Once all of the work orders were in, Anthony Valle, Print Operator, collaborated with the finalists directly in the work order:

“Working with the finalists was a blast from on-boarding to the ease of communicating with them through Shop. They all have great minds and their parts are a great reflection of that. It was easy to make their parts to their specifications despite being countries apart.”

Meet the Winners

We would like to give a big round of applause to all the challenge participants! And, now it’s time to announce the GrabCAD Shop Challenge winners:

First Place: V2 And V3 Multipurpose Bracket by winston.jennings-1

“I liked the experience of interacting with the interface ranging from configuring a new order to progress updates in the comments,” says Winston. “Anthony did a great job managing the orders and worked with me to achieve a successful print whenever he found issues.”

Second Place: Multipurpose Extension key by siddhant.shrivastava-2

“The GrabCAD Shop team was really great,” says Siddhant Shrivastava. “They were ready to help me in any way possible way. The surface finish of the 3D printed products were great and really up to the mark!”

Third Place: 3D-printable ratched by mampfi-1

“I created this part because I had a broken exercise machine I wanted to fix,” Mampfi explains. When we asked him what his favorite part about working with GrabCAD Shop was, he explained it was the schedule viewer and having multiple printers to choose from. He also appeciated that the onboarding was simple: “I thought GrabCAD Shop was pretty straightforward, easy, and well implemented.”

Fourth Place: Hook 044 without 3D print support (invisible fixing) by lauri.link

“This submission at first seemed like most, but like it’s designed it had some real hidden features that set it apart,” explains the judges. “The hiding of the screws and the strength analysis proved that this hook could hold up to the challenge.”

Fifth Place: Mechanical hand blender by dhruval.javia-1

“GrabCAD Shop really reduces the whole 3D printing shop workflow to just a couple of clicks!” says Dhruval Javia. “I was impressed by the wide variety of file formats for CAD models supported by the software. The status update and 3D printing process history feature was also great!”

Again, congratulations to all the participants and winners! To read what the judges loved about each design, visit the GrabCAD Shop Challenge results page. And stay tuned for more challenges coming your way!