At this year's Motek, norelem once again presented a special highlight in addition to numerous product innovations: the awarding of the "Engineering Newcomer". The winners of this year's competition were announced during an award ceremony.



On Wednesday, October 11, at 2 p.m., the time had finally come: After numerous spectators had joined in the countdown, the norelem Academy announced the winners of the Engineering Newcomer 2023. The selected teams presented themselves and their project and accepted their prizes. Afterwards, many visitors stayed at the booth - from experienced buyers to young designers. Both the award ceremony and the norelem products met with lively interest, also among the international guests.



Engineering Newcomer - the competition

The design competition was held for the 10th time this year. It offers students at universities, technical colleges and universities of applied sciences the opportunity to have their self-developed projects or final theses in the field of engineering and development evaluated by a top-class jury of experts and to present them to the general public. Once again this year, there were numerous project submissions from areas such as automation, food and medical technology, thermoelectronics, traffic and transportation. All ideas are examined by experts for their innovative and practical value, their market opportunities, the clever and cost-effective use of standard and purchased parts, and their very practical handling and function. Last but not least, technological implementation and professional presentation, for example in social media, also play a role.



The winning teams - powered by norelem

The Rudolf Diesel Technical School in Nuremberg was particularly convincing this year. Their project "LaWiKran", a mobile lifting solution for beekeeping and agriculture, received 1st place in the competition. The team mastered the challenge of completing the innovative crane within half a year while maintaining its compact design. The LaWiKran can be used to lift different loads weighing up to 200 kg, such as beehives and construction bags, onto a trailer. In total, the team used more than 20 different products from norelem, such as gas springs to make the crane easy to set up, ball lock pins with mushroom handles and plain bearings on the base frame.



Second place went to the Höhere Technische Bundeslehr- und Versuchsanstalt (HTBLuVA) Wiener Neustadt for its "destacking unit for E2 crates", which can be used in a meat processing plant. Here, it was particularly important to comply exactly with the regulations of the food industry and to ensure the performance of the system so that it can process over 400 crates per hour. Here, too, they fell back on the large range of products from norelem and used several standard parts, including in the pneumatics.



Third place went to the HTL Neufelden with the "KEBA Injection Molding Simulator", a small model of an injection molding machine suitable for a desk, which should look as "real" as possible and still be transportable. Standard components from norelem were used for the drive, specifically timing belts, timing belt pulleys and tensioning sets.

norelem was already known to all the winning teams as a full-range supplier of standard and operating elements. In particular, the clear online catalog, the free download of detailed CAD models and the rapid availability of parts made project work easier, according to the participants.