“It’s fun every year,” says Lance Lu, data scientist at Mantech, about serving as a judge at the SkillsUSA Additive Manufacturing Competition, held every June in Atlanta in conjunction with the annual SkillsUSA National Leadership & Skills Conference (NLSC).
Created in 2013 by SME and Stratasys, the Additive Manufacturing Competition challenges students to use additive manufacturing technologies and design to create solutions for real-world challenges. The 2026 challenge tasked students with designing and printing a precision attachment system for a standardized glider launch platform inspired by aerospace engineering principles. This year, teams from three middle schools, 35 high schools and 13 post-secondary schools — totaling 102 students from 35 states — printed nearly 800 parts on Stratasys printers over three days. Members of the winning teams are awarded scholarships, 3D printers and other valuable resources.
Students document their process and present their final solutions to judges, building real-life skills that go beyond the competition. Lu has been judging the SkillsUSA Additive Manufacturing Competition for the past five years, since his former college adviser suggested he try it when he was an advanced manufacturing graduate student. “I thought it would be a good opportunity to encourage students to pursue advanced manufacturing applications, and I thought it would be fun to see how they would approach the challenge of using additive manufacturing for real-world problems,” says Lu.
The judging experience has gone beyond his expectations. “The new design challenge students create every year is always interesting and results in fun designs that surprise me,” Lu notes.
His enthusiasm for the project has led Lu to recommend being a SkillsUSA Additive Manufacturing Competition judge to other manufacturers.
“It’s a great way to get out of your day-to-day, and see how 3D printing can excite and encourage interested students,” says Lu. “Over the years, more and more of them come in with some understanding of the tool and how to best use it.”
“SME does a great job of encouraging students to engage with these new tools,” he adds. “The solutions they come up with will surprise you. And their excitement is infectious.”
2026 SkillsUSA Additive Manufacturing Competition winners were:
Gold
- Middle School: Matrim Amendola and Brennan Anderson, Sleepy Hill Middle School, Lakeland, Florida
- High School: Mason White and Deacon Schoonover, Kirksville Area Technical Center, Kirksville, Missouri
- Post-Secondary: Wyatt Kreutzer and Hunter Trumble, Central Community College, Hastings, Nebraska
Silver
- Middle School: Tessa Klein and Liliana Paez, Gifford School, Racine, Wisconsin
- High School: Isaac Hilderbrand and Aidan Aylward, Belleview High School, Belleview, Florida
- Post-Secondary: Wilber Calles and Noah Simpson, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale, Virginia
Bronze
Middle School: Mateo Olivo-Cruz and Nolan Thibodeaux, Nellie N. Coffman Middle School, Cathedral City, California
