Competing in 3D

While the pandemic has curbed people’s travel worldwide, it hasn’t slowed the inspiration of engineers, makers and innovators at our makerspaces.

Eager to motivate fellow Iraqis who’ve been quarantining for months, Field Ready team members at IOT Maker - with Erbil Makerspace and Mosul Space in cooperation with Al-Turath University - announced a 3D design competition this summer to help people stretch their digital design and fabrication skills.

Iraq’s national lockdown meant people couldn't leave their homes except for essential needs, but our makerspace teams have offered remote learning events to interested Iraqis since the spring in an effort to keep learning fresh and help people build their digital skills. The competition - which was open to all who’d attended in-person or online events at the makerspaces - seemed to be a natural outgrowth of those efforts, said Mariam Yaarub, technical lead for Erbil Makerspace.

The competition was set up in three stages, she noted. " At every stage we posed a problem that could be solved or minimized through 3D design," said Yaarub, who helped organize and judge the competition. "The first task was 'Upcycling with 3D Design,' the second was 'Design an Illustrative Tool for Education' and the third and last task is 'Design for Disability.'"

The competition’s first stage kicked off in mid-July with 75 people signing up – 46 men and 29 women aged 19 to 47, all vying to win one of three 3D printers that will be awarded to the top three designs. The first stage qualified 25 participants, the second stage 10 and the third will include three.

Assigned to design educational kits and teaching tools in the second stage, competitors submitted a wide variety of proposals - including a molecular building-block kit, a chart marker and 3D math puzzles.

After close evaluation of each design our team chose 10 finalists; those designs will be produced as prototypes. The final design competition winners will be announced Sept. 25, and the three top designers will be awarded 3D printers.

All of the second-stage finalists’ designs are pictured above. We’ll share the judges’ decisions in a post later this week.