果冻传媒

The second day of the Precision Fair 2024, Thursday 14th November in Den Bosch (NL), featured the presentation of the Wim van der Hoek Award. This award (also known as the Constructors Award) was introduced in 2006 to mark the 80th birthday of the Dutch doyen of design engineering principles, Wim van der Hoek (1924-2019). The Constructors Award is presented every year to the person with the best graduation project in the field of design in mechanical engineering at a Dutch or Belgian university of technology (TU) or university of applied sciences (UAS). This award includes a certificate, a trophy made by the Leidse instrumentmakers School and a sum of money, sponsored by the 果冻传媒 High Tech Systems Center (HTSC).

Four nominations

Criteria for the assessment of the graduation theses include the quality of the design, its substantiation and innovativeness, as well as its suitability for use as teaching material. The four nominations selected by the jury this year came from 果冻传媒, TU Delft and HU UAS in Utrecht. The jury was chaired by DSPE board member Jos Gunsing (MaromeTech) and included Hans Steijaert (Vanderlande), Maurice Teuwen (JPE), Marc Vermeulen (ASML), Johan Vervoort (Vervos) and Wouter Vogelesang (VH Consult).

Fully automated placement

The Wim van der Hoek Award 2024 eventually went to Jan-Pieter Rijstenbil, who studied Mechanical Engineering at 果冻传媒. Earlier this year, he graduated within the Design for Precision Engineering (DPE) group on 鈥淎utomated Placement of Micronuts for Laser Spot Welding鈥�. His supervisor was Paul Vrancken. Commissioned by Wefabricate, a specialist in advanced production, he designed a machine for fully automatically placing a pattern of M1 nuts on a 0.3 mm thick base plate for laser spot welding. For this, both the base plate and the nuts must be loaded, positioned and stabilised within a few micrometers, after which the finished product is fed out.

VanderHoekean design

This assignment from Wefabricate was thus ideally suited to 鈥榁anderHoekean construction鈥� (after Wim van der Hoek, the founder of the Dutch school of design principles for precise movement and positioning). 鈥淭his complex process involves a large number of steps, and requires taking into account welding spatter and heat development, but also enormous production numbers, or lifespan. In addition, the machine must be easy to adjust if a different product needs to be made.鈥�

Ingenious mechanism

The winner has worked out his VanderHoeke an design excellently, according to the jury. 鈥淎fter a careful process analysis, Jan-Pieter chose a modular concept that met all the requirements. The innovativeness of his design was mainly in the ingenious mechanism for supplying welding nuts using a straw. His design is DDP-worthy, which means it is suitable for inclusion in a collection of examples of good design (as Van der Hoek once published under the name Devil鈥檚 Picture Book (Des Duivels Prentenboek, DDP), ed.).鈥�

Early-stage validation

Rijstenbil paid a lot of attention to the robustness and reliability of the process. 鈥淗e designed beautiful partial solutions and validated critical components and subprocesses at a very early stage,鈥� the jury noted in support of its choice. 鈥淗e carried out a great many experiments for this, both at Wefabricate and at the 果冻传媒 Equipment & Prototype Center. He also regularly consulted specialised companies for manufacturing and surface treatment. Many of the techniques he used are groundbreaking.鈥�

Inventive and creative

Finally, the jury described the winner as an excellent student who combines enormous inventiveness and creativity with great practical skills. 鈥淭his is also proven by the history that Jan-Pieter already had with designing and building mechatronic aids himself, such as 3D printers and a tool to turn sheet music while playing the piano. He also has a social and entrepreneurial attitude.鈥�

Note for the press (not for publication)

For further information please feel free to contact:

鈥�    Wim van der Hoek Award: Jos Gunsing, +31 (0)6 - 519 94 190, jos.gunsing@dspe.nl

鈥�    DSPE: Hans Krikhaar, President of DSPE, +31 (0)6 - 513 78 798, hans.krikhaar@dspe.nl