image: Halil Tekinalp, senior R&D researcher at ORNL, holds the Equipment and Tooling Innovation Award he and his team received for their groundbreaking multiplexing extrusion system. The large components featured in the photo were 3D printed using this award-winning technology.
Credit: Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory was honored with four prestigious awards at the 2025 Composites and Advanced Materials Conference (CAMX), North America’s largest event dedicated to composites and advanced materials.
On the opening night of the conference, ORNL received the 2025 SAMPE Organizational Excellence Award. This national award is presented annually in recognition of extraordinary contributions within the advanced materials and processes community across industrial, academic and governmental sectors.
The following evening, ORNL garnered two Awards for Composites Excellence (ACE Awards) in the manufacturing category. The Equipment and Tooling Innovation Award recognized ORNL’s groundbreaking multiplexing extrusion system. This technology integrates multiple 3D printing extruders into a single high-output stream using specially engineered nozzles. It combines the speed of larger extruders with exceptional flexibility, precision and multi-material capabilities — enabling the simultaneous printing of multiple materials within a single bead without the need for equipment swaps.
In addition, the Material and Process Innovation Award was presented for ORNL’s collaborative research with Electroimpact. This ACE Award celebrated the pioneering development of composite rocket nozzles manufactured using modular, additively manufactured heads with assisted large-scale dissolvable tooling. These water-soluble molds eliminate the need for machining, solvents or labor-intensive demolding, reducing costs and lead time.
“ORNL is leading the way in carbon fiber and composites research, and we’re helping move these materials from the lab into real-world use,” said Robert Wagner, associate laboratory director for ORNL’s Energy Science and Technology Directorate. “The breakthroughs our teams are making are changing the game for industries like aerospace, automotive, energy, defense and even the nation’s infrastructure.”
The conference also recognized individual achievement. Uday Vaidya — the University of Tennessee-ORNL Governor’s Chair in Advanced Composites Manufacturing — was awarded the Academic Pioneer Award. This honor acknowledges groundbreaking ideas that have been rigorously tested and demonstrated to advance composites technology. With more than 30 years of experience in engineered plastics and composites — and a leadership role as chief technology officer for IACMI-The Composites Institute — Vaidya’s contributions stand as a testament to innovation in the field.
Held in Orlando, Florida, Sept. 8-11, CAMX is widely regarded as the premier exposition in its field. The awards were presented by CAMX alongside the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering and the American Composites Manufacturers Association.
Many of the ORNL innovations celebrated at CAMX were sponsored by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office, including projects funded by DOE through the SM2ART Program with the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. — Tina Johnson