CAMX – The Composites and Advanced Materials Expo announced the winners of the fifth annual CAMX Award, sponsored by Ashland. The CAMX Award recognizes two cutting-edge innovations that will significantly impact composites and advanced materials. The award is divided into two categories that embody the spirit of CAMX – Combined Strength and Unsurpassed Innovation.
 
As two distinct honors, the Combined Strength Award acknowledges a product that incorporates composites materials that solves a problem through teamwork and collaboration, and the Unsurpassed Innovation Award celebrates a product with a design that incorporates low-cost materials for high-volume applications that can change the outlook of a particular market.
 
The winner of this year's Combined Strength Award is Owens Corning for creating its functional composite parts using a state of the art material and process innovation: XSTRAND. Over the past 2 years Owens Corning has worked to develop a range of technical 3D printing filament products supported by key partners. These innovative products have been specially formulated to allow the incorporation of fiber reinforcement into polymers whilst allowing their easy processing on fused filament fabrication (FFF) printers. This transformation takes FFF (or FDM) fabrication from the niche hobbyist into the environment of functional prototyping and beyond into the manufacture of commercial composite parts through additive production.

The winner of this year's Unsurpassed Innovation Award is Magna Exteriors for its lightweight, thermoplastic, recyclable liftgate module. As the global crossover utility vehicle market continues to grow, manufacturers look for every opportunity to take weight out of vehicles, and this liftgate achieves a 25 percent mass savings over the previous steel version, which helps the manufacturer meet emissions and fuel economy regulations. Thermoplastic materials also enable greater vehicle drama with deeper draws and tighter radii.

The winning entries were presented during the General Session at CAMX at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, Dallas Ballroom – Omni Hotel. To see the entries in person, go to the award pavilion (booth BB63) of the Exhibit Hall. For more information, go to http://www.thecamx.org/awards-competitions/.