Wildest Parts Competition: See the 2021 Winners
The Wildest Parts competition challenges students and professionals to create something that shows off imaginative design and exciting machining skills using Mastercam.
Each year, we eagerly await the arrival of the entries and this year didn’t disappoint. Thank you to all of the entrants, instructors, and teammates who participated! We know it was challenging to get parts cut and submitted this year, and greatly appreciate all of your work and efforts in delivering incredible parts. Here are this year’s Wildest Parts winners.
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Secondary Division
First Place: Domino and Dice Cup Game Set by Wes Bruski (Instructor Jim Weber), Capital High School
Wes and his family have always enjoyed games, playing a lot of cards, dice, and dominos. While they were playing, Wes had the idea to make a custom set of dominos and dice cup. Wes made the prototypes out of wood, then machined the final set. He enjoyed every second of this project and learned so much about machining throughout the process.
Second Place: Padlock by Cadogan Wheat (Instructor Russ Fisk), Hamilton High School
Cadogan’s part is a model of a padlock, with a lock and key. Every part of the padlock was milled out of wood or Delrin plastic, except for the tumblers and key.
Postecondary Division
First Place: Keyboard by Gus Bronk (Instructor Kurt Hutchinson), Washington State University
Gus wanted to design and machine a unique keyboard from exotic materials. The main case is machined from a Boeing Surplus Forged billet of 2000 series aluminum from the 1970s! This project contained the largest single part and the most parts Gus has ever machined and assembled. He learned a lot more features in Mastercam while making this part.
Second Place: Carousel by Jim Courtney (Instructor Nathan Witkowski), Erie Community College
Jim lives in an area with amusement parks nearby and saw a solar-powered carousel which sparked the inspiration for this part. He didn’t want to make a part that would sit in the closet gathering dust after it was over, he wanted to make something fun that would appeal to the kid in all of us, yet still had machining elements that would impress technically. He had hoped to use the piece to get a job, and it worked! Congratulations, Jim!
Third Place: Marble Machine by Jonathan Hughes (Instructor Nathan Witkowski), Erie Community College
The goal of Jonathan’s part was to make a machine with reasonable complexity and a lifting mechanism so it could continuously run without the need to manually reload marbles. It worked amazingly! It ran extremely smooth and had a superior finish.
Professional Division
First Place: Ironman by Andy Beach, Grand Rapids Community College
This piece was created to test out a brand new UMC 500 Haas Mill where Andy works. The machine was the first 5- axis machine installed at Grand Rapids Community College. Andy wanted to give the machine a thorough test by machining a multiaxis part that would push the size constraints of the machine.
Second Place: Dodecahedron of Mastercam Toolpaths by David Berry, Southwestern Illinois College
David’s part was modeled after a 20-side die. It has 5 faces removed and a morphed stand was added to it. Inside the hollowed shape, there’s a smaller dodecahedron featuring an engraving of all the toolpaths that he used to create the part! This part was a study in multiaxis toolpaths and David used it to push his understanding of Mastercam.
Third Place: Wireless Charging Disc by PUTEN PLUS
Many types of wood were tried, including mahogany, Taiwan Asian fir, and green sandalwood in designing this part. Green sandalwood was chosen because of its hardness and stability. In a circular charging base body, the circuit board is precisely mounted in a wood part through sophisticated machining programming. Polished copper is installed on the surface to make it look like a reflection of the moon!
Teams Division
First Place: Thor Hammer in Base by Wrindy Hauser’s team (Instructor Andy Beach), Grand Rapids Community College
Wrindy and Ethan both belong to a machinist apprenticeship program at GRCC. In making Thor’s hammer, coming up with how they were going to fixture the pieces was a challenge. Figuring out how to break up the hammer into different operations to complete was a great learning experience. They said they wanted to make something that gets people excited about machining. When anyone looks at their project, they are going to think it’s awesome and want to learn how to make it!
Second Place: Museum by Jiao-Hao Wun’s team (Instructor Shun-Chi Kuo) , Vanung University
Jiao-Hao’s team (Jiao-Hao, Bo-Yu) wanted to make a modern museum with a traditional view. It is a multi-faced machine part with a curved shape to it. Using only 3 axes, they designed and processed multi-faced machining parts to learn more machining methods.
Third Place: Robot by Ming-Yang Chen’s team (Instructor Shun-Chi Kuo), Vanung University
Ming-Yang and Gu-Hao thought the robot was very cool and they created it by themselves. In order to challenge the assembly, they had to grasp the size of the hole when assembling. They learned that the size of the machine is very important and that they must be careful of the size-changing due to temperature shifts.