REM Surface Engineering, B9Creations top AMUG technical competition awards

The most useful work on the AMUG competition floor did not look flashy from a distance. REM Surface Engineering tackled a problem that every powder-bed fusion shop knows too well: how to clear sintered powder from enclosed internal passages without wrecking thin walls or delicate geometry.

That entry, Breaking the Powder Barrier: Selective Chemical Declogging Enables Truly Free AM Design, won the Finishing & Post Processing category and also took the Members' Choice award. The result pointed to a part of additive manufacturing that often decides whether a design stays theoretical or becomes manufacturable. Internal channels, hidden cavities and other hard-to-reach geometries are where post-processing can make or break the finished part, and REM’s work focused squarely on that bottleneck.

B9Creations claimed the top spot in Advanced Concepts, a category that pushes beyond immediate production problems and toward what the technology may become next. The company’s win mattered for the same reason REM’s did: it showed AMUG rewarding both the practical engineering that clears today’s obstacles and the conceptual work that expands tomorrow’s design space.

AMUG said the competition took place during its March 15-19 conference in Reno and was judged by 12 AMUG DINOs. The format also shifted this year, with modified categories and a field that included many first-time competitors and even first-time conference attendees. That mix gave the competition a fresher edge and made the results feel less like a closed loop of familiar names and more like a live benchmark for where the field is heading.

For serious makers, the signal is clear. The strongest entries were not just about surface finish or clever geometry in isolation. They were about engineering choices that preserve part integrity after the build, or about new concepts that could widen what additive systems are asked to do in the first place. REM Surface Engineering’s declogging approach speaks to the growing importance of post-processing as a design enabler, while B9Creations’ Advanced Concepts win shows that the community still values ambitious ideas that point beyond the current production norm.

Taken together, the winners suggested that advanced print craftsmanship is moving toward a tighter blend of design freedom, process control and downstream finishing. The parts that stand out now are not only the ones that print well, but the ones that can survive the full path from powder bed to usable component.