Innovative 3D trophies take centre stage at this year’s Northern Lincolnshire Business Awards

Anne Tate receives the trophies from Darryl Smalley and his fellow students (from left to right) Liam Coggan, George Hill and Aloysius Rosario.

WINNERS at this year’s Northern Lincolnshire Business Awards received innovative trophies which were specially designed and created using groundbreaking 3D printing technology.

Students from the Lincoln Castle Academy worked with the University of Lincoln on an engineering project called the 3D Partnership to create the trophies.

The new 3D printing technology is normally used by students with ambitions to work in the world of architecture and industrial design.

A-Level student and project co-ordinator Darryl Smalley approached Anne Tate, the Chamber’s Northern Lincolnshire manager and organiser of the Northern Lincolnshire Business Awards which are staged in partnership with the Grimsby and Scunthorpe Telegraphs, about the possibility of producing a set of trophies to help spread the awareness of 3D printing and to improve the students’ skills and knowledge of 3D printing technologies.

Anne welcomed the opportunity of having something a bit different and the project was born.

Darryl and his fellow students, Liam Coggan, George Hill, Aloysius Rosario and Joseph Coupland worked with Lincoln University lecturer Stewart Bibby to design and print the trophies. Darryl said the most difficult one to produce was in the shape of a Beehive for the Business Hive Award which took around 26 hours to print. The Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented to John Clugston, chairman of the Scunthorpe-based Clugston Group was also a technical challenge for the students.

Receiving the trophies before the awards evening, Anne said: “I think these trophies are absolutely fabulous and I’d like to thank Darryl and his team for all their hard work.

“Doing something like this will set them apart from other students when they apply to go to university and I will provide them with a testimonial and a thank you. It’s been a project which they’ve seen through from start to finish, overcoming technological challenges and meeting a tight deadline. These are exactly the characteristics businesses are looking for.

“The trophies are extremely innovative and it’s nice to have something at the forefront of new technology for our Business Awards”.

Darryl explained that 3D printing is an exciting technology which can be used in all sorts of applications, from printing parts for nuclear submarines, recreating bones and body parts for medical applications and even helping a blind French lady “see” her baby. The mum-to-be went blind at 17 and couldn’t see the ultra-sound scan of her baby, so doctors surprised her by printing out the digital image of her baby on a 3D printer so she could touch and feel her unborn child.