All they had was the help of their professor and some university equipment
Students Alen Britvić and Dejan Ćurčić have designed a 3D digitizer, under the guidance of their mentor Tomislav Pavlic. These young inventors from the High Technical School in Bjelovar have introduced themselves to the public at the innovation competition during the ARCA Exhibition in Zagreb. They won the first place which brought them participation in the iENA 2015 competition in Nurnberg, where they also won gold among more than 800 participants from about 40 countries, reports Poslovni.hr on March 6, 2016.
"We came up with this entire idea during the additive technology workshop, where we studied about 3D scanners. We wanted to make our own scanner using the equipment from our lab. We worked on the project within the Student Technology and Entrepreneurship Incubator whenever we did not have classes and during weekends, so the whole project lasted for almost a year", Alen Britvić and Dejan Ćurčić explain.
Although 3D digitizers already exist around the world, they decided to create one from the equipment that is available to everyone and affordable for everyone. "We believe that this will be of great help to both amateurs and entrepreneurs because of various possibilities that this technology offers. Our innovation differs especially from the financial aspect. Not only is it affordable for everyone, but we have also designed everything ourselves and made it on a 3D printer. We have also programmed everything ourselves", Ćurčić and Brtvić say.
They plan to keep working on similar innovative projects and are already mulling over how to make this innovation more accessible to schools and universities, so these institutions too can try to dive into the world of additive technologies via their own 3D digitizers. "When we introduced our 3D digitizer to audiences, they were amazed because of the fact that students have made a device which functions perfectly and we did it almost from nothing. The award we got from the jury in Germany, which consisted of experts from around the world, is the best proof of this project’s worthiness", Brtvić and Ćurčić concluded.
