2019 ACE Award Finalists

2019 ACE Awards Finalists

Awards for Composites Excellence (ACE), a prestigious composites industry competition, recognize outstanding achievement and innovation in technology, manufacturing, and product development. The American Composites Manufacturers Association (ACMA), host to the long-standing awards program, will present six awards in three categories at CAMX. Categories include Design, Manufacturing, and Market Growth. CAMX is excited to present the finalists for the 2021 Awards for Composites Excellence. These awards are sponsored by Composites One.

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Design Category Finalists

Most Creative Application

This award is presented to the composites product that showcases composites use in a unique, new application or uses composites’ attributes in imaginative, innovative, or artistic ways. The composites product should show evidence of significantly replacing traditional materials, or show innovative use or refinement of existing composites materials that impacts current or new markets. Candidate product entries for this award include both production and prototype/research and development. Here are the 2019 finalists.


Filament wound, urethane resin and marine grade gel coat light pole. Marketed to theme parks as a sustainable alternative to traditional wooden poles that woodpeckers were destroying. The composite light pole was designed to prevent this problem and to maintain the aesthetic look of a tropical landscape of palm trees. It was also designed to withstand a category 5 hurricane.

Appalachian Plastics, Inc.

Innovation in Green Composites Design

This award is presented to the composites product that best exemplifies innovation that lowers/minimizes the environmental footprint or offers an attractive life cycle assessment (LCA) of the product. The product design should demonstrate application of new or innovative materials, or applies a unique design that contributes to efficient manufacturing, delivery, installation and in-service performance leading to energy savings.


This material is an SMC Material which can assist in qualifying for LEEDS and meets the California Proposal 65. This material is styrene free and also is available with flame retardant properties or without the flame retardant chemistry. This material has a very wide processing window even though it contains no styrene. This material is being sold into the building and construction market, electric enclosures market and HVAC market place.

Lyondellbasell

Manufacturing Category Finalists

Equipment and Tooling Innovation Award

This award is presented to the equipment, tooling, production aid, or software that is designed to improve manufacturing production, environmental sustainability, or product quality and performance in composites manufacturing. The entry must demonstrate improvement or efficiency in the manufacturing of a specific end-use composites product. Here are the 2019 finalists.


Reducing development time and cost of composites materials is on the main agenda for all organizations to remain competitive and penetrate market. A powerful tool to achieve that is Integrated Computational Materials Engineering – or in simpler words – simulation to predict and virtually test composite materials. Furthermore, when organization apply this method they quickly realize the amount of data that needs to be captured and validated, both virtual (ICME) and physical data for validation. A new innovative product integration between MaterialCenter and Digimat can enable this methodology and solve key challenges in this area.

e-Xstream engineering

Material and Process Innovation Award

This award is presented for a material or process that best contributes to efficient manufacturing and product sustainability. The entries should demonstrate use of innovative materials, production techniques or methods that result in better quality, reduced production costs, increased production rates and volume, or reduced life cycle costs. The entry must demonstrate its application in the manufacturing of a specific, end-use composites product.


The developed process was shown on an automotive structural component, a Transmission cross member. This component fulfils loading requirements and performance specifications based on a past project with a leading OEM. As a design and feasibility study the bionic “manta ray” part design enables a special core-layer architecture. A freeform shape provides an approach to avoid stress concentrations for superior fatigue strength instead of conventional rib designs. Local reinforcement with UD tapes and functionalization with metallic inserts were used for a reliable manufacture with a low variability of product performance.

ENGEL Austria GmbH

Market Growth Category FINALISTS

Infinite Possibility for Market Growth Award

This award is presented to the composites product that demonstrates the potential to significantly increase the use of composites in existing markets or generate the greatest impact to open new and emerging markets for composites. This product exemplifies innovation, creativity, and commercialization leading to market growth. Here are the 2019 Finalists.


Continuous Composites' Continuous Fiber 3D Printing (CF3D) technology introduces is a fundamental shift in the manufacturing of Advanced Composite Materials (ACM). Leveraging rapid curing resins with continuous fibers, CF3D creates a moldless and Out of Autoclave (OOA) composite manufacturing process. CF3D can print with both structural fibers (e.g. Carbon Fiber, Glass Fiber and Kevlar) and functional fibers (e.g. fiber optics, metallic wire). We have demonstrated the ability to print advanced fiber optics and embed real-time structural monitoring and performance optimization into the composite part. Additionally, functional fiber applications range from aircraft anti-icing, dielectric aircraft, embedded circuitry, and software machine learning.

Continuous Composites

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