In today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, we’re talking about a new material, a little business, and an industry event. Nanoscribe has introduced a new photoresin with special properties for microoptical elements, and Azul 3D is welcoming two new members to its Board of Directors. Finally, Arburg Technology Days has been postponed until 2021.

Nanoscribe’s New IP-n162 Photoresin for 3D Printing

Compound lens system with two refractive elements printed with Nanoscribe’s IP-n162 photoresin. The novel printing material has a high refractive index of 1.62, which expands the opportunities in creating innovative miniaturized optical systems. Printed by Nanoscribe, optical design: Simon Thiele, TTI GmbH TGU Printoptics, Stuttgart.

In order to meet the demand for advanced optical designs, Nanoscribe has launched a new 3D printing material that has special properties for high refractive index microoptics. The novel IP-n162 photoresin was designed specifically for Two-Photon Polymerization (2PP) additive manufacturing, and has a high refractive index of 1.62 at a 589 nm wavelength, combined with a high dispersion that corresponds to a low Abbe number (approximate measure of the material’s dispersion) of 25. It also features a low absorption in the infrared region, and can help Nanoscribe expand opportunities to make highly accurate miniature optical systems and elements, like prisms, microlenses, and complex freeform optics, using its 3D microfabrication. Other applications for Nanoscribe’s new IP-n162 photoresin include compound refractive optical systems, photonic packaging, infrared microoptics, and quantum technology.

“The currently commercially available resins are too similar in their refractive indices, which limits innovations in microoptical systems,” stated Matthias Kraus, a scientific researcher at the University of Applied Sciences in Jena, who has pilot-tested IP-n162 in novel optical applications. “IP-n162 has promising optical properties to develop a useful achromatic system required, for example for display devices, ultra-sensitive detectors and medical applications.”

Azul 3D Welcomes Two Investors to Board of Directors

Illinois startup Azul 3D, which commercialized its ultra-quick, large-format, proprietary High Area Rapid Printing (HARP) technology this summer, announced that 3D printing veteran John Hartner, the CEO of metal AM leader ExOne, and investor Louis A. Simpson, the former Chief Investment Officer for GEICO, have been added to its board of directors. The two clearly have major support for the company’s mission: in August, both Hartner and Simpson were also listed as investors in the company’s $12.5M seed funding round, which also included investors Joe Allison, the former CEO of Stratasys Direct Manufacturing; former 3D Systems chairperson Wally Loewenbaum; and Hugh Evans, former senior vice president of corporate development for 3D Systems.

“This is the first polymer additive manufacturing platform that has the scale, speed and material palette to truly move 3D printing into scale production. It opens up countless new applications that are impossible with traditional technologies,” said Hartner. “I’m excited to advise a talented team to leverage this breakthrough technology for production customers around the world.”

Arburg Technology Days Postponed Until 2021

Nobody had even heard of corona in 2019: around 30 exhibits and applications in the Customer Center gave visitors to the Technology Days an overview of the depth and breadth of Arburg’s portfolio of machines and processes. (Image courtesy of Arburg)

Since 1999, German family-owned company Arburg, one of the top manufacturers of plastic processing machines, has hosted more than 93,000 invited guests from around 50 countries at its annual Technology Days event, which it calls a “unique and firmly established event in the international world of plastics.” But in 2020, this will sadly not be the case: Arburg Technologys Days is just the latest industry event casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to avoid exposing its employees and thousands of event attendees to the coronavirus, Arburg has made the decision to cancel the four-day event for 2020, and come back strong in the summer, when the COVID crisis will (hopefully) be under control, and cold and flu season is over.

Arbrug’s Managing Partner Juliane Hehl,, who is responsible for the company’s marketing department, said, “Welcoming around 6,000 visitors every year, the Technology Days are a hallmark that Arburg is famous for all over the world.

“In these uncertain times, we are determined not to put safety and security at risk. By making the decision to move the event to June at this early stage, we are proactively demonstrating our commitment to the responsibility we owe to our customers, partners, and employees.”

Arburg Technology Days, with its over 50 exhibits, expert presentations, network opportunities, and site tours, will now be held from June 9-12, 2021 at the company’s massive Lossburg headquarters.

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Postal Service provided new service performance data today to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for the week of Sept. 12 through Sept. 18, 2020. During the seven-day period, there was a slight dip in service, which is consistent with performance the week following the Labor Day and Memorial Day holidays.

Key performance indicators for the week of Sept. 12th include:

• First-Class Mail: 86.75 percent of first-class mail was delivered on time, a 1.99 percent decrease from the week of Sept. 5th
• Periodicals: 77.04 percent of periodicals were delivered on time, a 3.28 percent decrease from the week of Sept. 5th
• Marketing Mail: 86.90 percent of marketing mail was delivered on time, a 1 percent decrease from week of Sept. 5th

Historically, service performance has decreased between 1.3 and 2.9 percent in the week following the Labor Day holiday. The reported service decline in First-Class Mail was consistent with the service impact following the 2020 Memorial Day holiday.

The recent post-Labor Day dip was attributable to volume buildup in the system from the holiday weekend which was quickly addressed but not before it had some impact on service performance data. The Postal Service was able to overcome and address disruptions in service as the result of fires in the west as well as hurricanes and tropical storms in the south.

“Our Postal Service operations team responded quickly and worked over the weekend to address buildup within the system which has now been cleared,” said Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. “I have directed our operations team to move quickly and deploy the necessary resources to address an anticipated increase in mail volume this coming weekend. I am proud of the work our 640,000 Postal Service employees do every day to deliver for the American public.”

To process an anticipated high mail and package volume the weekend of Sept. 26-27, the Postal Service has made operational adjustments including: increased staffing for locations and operations with expected high volumes, early Saturday start times for all local operations, and expanded process monitoring to ensure any performance issues are frequently communicated and elevated as necessary.

Service performance is defined by the Postal Service from acceptance of a mailpiece into our system through delivery, measured against published service standards.

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An exciting and potentially revolutionary slow-burn development in 3D printing is that of gradient materials (also called Functionally Graded Materials, or FGMs). With FGMs, we can mix materials in such a way as to obtain different densities, hardnesses, and material compositions at the level of any voxel. Electron beam melting, various directed energy deposition processes, and PolyJet are just some of the technologies potentially capable of gradient materials.

The idea of controlling properties at every voxel is hugely inspiring to me. We cannot begin to imagine how gradient parts could change how things can be made. We could put crumple zones in objects, design for wear so that particular parts could be replaced at set intervals, make items conductive or magnetic in certain areas or imbue differing degrees of magnetism across a part.

Stratasys has a shaver that they use to illustrate the concept. The grippy parts are printed soft, other areas are more like cushions, the handle itself is rigid and hard, but there is flexibility in the neck. All of these different qualities on the same part with the same printer.

Imagine an armored tank where you print a soft wall and an air gap while you multiplex or mix different materials on top like the layers of a cake. You could generate new configurations of reactive armor or sandwich materials. Some bulletproof vests suck against knives because they are made to dissipate bullet impact and not stop the sharp cut of a blade. If you took Dyneema or other Kevlar and made it printable to allow for gradient structures, you could remedy this in the same production step.

A lot of the 3D printing research going into the NFL helmet challenge is based on trying to create structures that can stop fast, sharp impacts and larger, blunt ones. With gradient structures we can achieve similar feats, not just for safety gear but for many other things. Picture absorbing layers or flexible materials for industry. Or imagine of your dashboard, which could be hard, rigid and smooth but be designed to flex upon impact. Or think of sound insulation or vibration reduction and already many applications can pop up. FGMs are exciting and there is a great deal of research going on. 

People are making functionally graded glasses on powder bed systems that mix as they print. Others are trying to mimic natural functionalities by making gradient composites and they are not alone. Some papers seem revolutionary in their own right, with this ETH team looking at gradient materials with sub-micrometer resolution. Fabrisonic, Formalloy, MELD, GE, DMG Mori, Sciaky, Aerosint and Optomec are just some of the machine vendors on whose equipment these gradient materials are made. You can even print with gradient materials using digital light processing. 

Applications of g-DLP–printed composites for sequential SMP components and 4D printing. Photo credit: Xiao Kuang, Georgia Tech

So, what is holding the development of gradient materials back? Once, when talking to John Barnes, he lamented that it was already so hard to get static parts right and that gradient parts would be very difficult to qualify and control. 

Indeed quality control would be hard on such a part. How could you monitor or verify the Shore hardness of something with multiple hardnesses? What would the test even be? How can you verify that a thing like that can work for 10 years? What would the simulation look like? How do you safety test such a thing? What is the fatigue strength of something if it has differing fatigue properties? Or how do we find out that this part may actually have a lower continuous service temperature than the material it is made of? How might you monitor that the right property is being made? Then, we have another problem, how do we design these parts? How can you do it in CAD? 3MF could support a design for a gradient part, but how would we design that part exactly?

We have enough trouble teaching everyone to think in design for additive manufacturing (DfAM), but how to think in gradients? When can we even determine that this would make sense? A gradient 3D-printed shoe sounds like a spectacular idea, but, perhaps it would be much more expensive than a conventional one. At the same time, a Croc is already a shoe made of one material and would be much less expensive than our printed variant.

While there is real excitement with regards to FGMs, we do find ourselves at an impasse. If we don’t understand something’s implications, don’t know how to design for it, and can’t conceive of its uses, we can be enthusiastic, but nothing more really. It would be like watching the nuclear or steam age approach realizing that you’re either going to dream too little or too much. On the one hand, you won’t get faster than “faster trains, I guess,” but on the other, you’ll think of nuclear-powered hairdryers and washing machines. 

So, if we want to enable an enabling technology, what do we do? We have to create an example that is abundantly clear, concise, and showcases the merits of this technology well. The GE bracket is my favorite example of this. It showcases our Geiger-like topology optimized design language. It illustrated that our technology could have broad applications and clearly showed that it can save weight, which is clearly important. To pitch FGMs, we need such an example. So, a generally demonstrable, recognizable, useful item that is improved specifically by being a gradient part. Any ideas on what this should be? Because what seems to be holding back this generation of materials is lack of understanding and sufficient inspiration, not technology. 

Having a child is a life-changing experience, and one that comes with a new job title: parent. Parenting is a lifetime job, and it starts from the moment a baby is born. The early days of a child’s life are crucial because it is when parents and infants first bond and begin their lives together. 

Being able to take time away from a career to be present for the first months of a child’s life is important to parents around the world. Many governments recognize that and provide their citizens with federal maternity leave and/or paternity leave protections. These protections allow parents to take time off from their jobs around the child’s arrival, while still receiving pay in some cases. Maternity and paternity leave also ensure employees’ position will be waiting for them once the leave term ends.  

While maternity leave and paternity leave are common practices in many countries around the world, the length of leave and payment protections vary greatly from one nation to the next. Cultural attitudes towards work and child rearing as well as shifting societal opinions relating to work-life balance are at the heart of the policy decisions and revisions pertaining to parental leave laws. As a result, the current maternity and paternity leave around the world are incredibly diverse.

Maternity leave policies around the world 

In terms of countries leading the way when it comes to generous maternity leave policies, our analysis found Bulgaria and Norway to be the most generous when it comes to time off. Norway has a flexible option that allows new mothers to take up to 59 weeks of maternity leave paid at an 80% pay rate, while Bulgaria offers 410 days of leave paid out at a rate of 90% of regular pay. We also found three countries that all guarantee a full year of maternity leave at full pay for their citizens – Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the shortest maternity leave policy belongs to Tunisia, where mothers are only allowed a month off at ⅔ their regular pay. Of course, one could argue that is still better than the policies in Papua New Guinea and the U.S., two countries that allow for three months of maternity leave that is fully unpaid, making them the only two countries on earth that do not offer some kind of paid maternity leave protection to their citizens.  

Paternity leave laws around the world 

When it comes to paternity leave, things are very different. Over 65 countries included in our analysis do not offer paternity leave of any kind for fathers. There has been a push in many countries around the world to increase paternity leave and encourage fathers to take time off to bond when a child is born, but that number shows that on a global level paternity leave protections still lag behind their mother-focused counterparts. 

While many countries do not have federally protected paternity leave, there are some that have implemented very generous policies. Sweden allocated 480 total days of leave for both parents, and splitting those days close to evenly is encouraged, so Swedish fathers can look forward to 200+ days of leave in many cases. Finland, Iceland, Spain, and Pakistan also allow fathers over three full months of leave, all at a pay rate of 70% of their normal wage or higher.

No matter where you live around the world, the joy, happiness, and changes that a new baby brings remain largely the same. And while parental leave policies differ from one nation to the next, at GetResponse we encourage all new parents to take full advantage of the time they are given to bond with their newest family member.

Shining 3D has released two new dual-light source, handheld scanners, the EinScan H and EinScan HX, that broaden the capabilities and applications enabled by the company’s 3D color scanning solutions. By integrating a second light source, in addition to the existing EinScan LED scanning technology, it will be possible to use hybrid light sources to capture full color and detail even for hard-to-scan objects, such as hair, or black or reflective metal surfaces.

Headquartered in China, with offices in Germany and the USA, Shining 3D has leveraged more than 10 years of experience in 3D scanning and digitization solutions to innovate and advance its product applications in education, medical, art and heritage, and industrial sectors.

Einscan H and HX handheld, dual light source 3D scanners

With the EinScan H, an infrared invisible light sensor is combined with the LED light sensor and a built-in color camera, to enable high quality scanning of large- or medium-sized objects. This includes difficult-to-scan items, such as hair and dark objects, that can now be captured using the infrared light source. The EinScan H with hybrid light sources, allows the user to choose an appropriate light source depending on the object and the scanning environment. In combination with innovative software algorithms, user-friendly design and handling, it enables “full human body data acquisition including hair, authentic digital replication of outstanding art pieces, furniture digitization for reproduction and virtual display and many more.”

The EinScan HX, on the other hand, combines a laser with Shining’s existing LED technology—which uses dual blue light sources—to widen the scope of materials that can be scanned and the variety of ambient conditions in which accurate scanning can be done. The blue LED structured light is used to capture object data in rapid scan mode, without the need for reference points, while multiple blue laser lines capture highly accurate, high quality, quick scanning of 3D objects, particularly those with reflective metal surfaces or black surfaces.

Shining 3D provides end-to-end integrated ‘Scan-Design-Print’ solutions, as well as specific scan to print solutions for Dental, and metrology solutions. For digital dental solutions, the company provides desktop 3d scanners with their AutoScan series, an intraoral scanner Aoralscan, and dental 3D printers with the AccuFab series for surgical guides or wax crowns, and the EP series for orthodontic models and metal crowns.

Yet the company, with over 300 patents and 100 copyrights, is probably best known for its EinScan range of 3D scanners. In June this year, had launched its Pro HD which extended fixed-scanning features to handheld scanning. In April, the company had launched its automated 3D inspection desktop system, AutoScan-Inspec, to improve efficiency in the scanning of small, complex parts, with accuracies up to 10 μm. In July, the Chinese company partnered with Japanese footwear company Magarimono, to develop a line of designer footwear using SLS 3D printing technologies with TPU material, where the design is based on that of the different types of clouds.

(Images and videos courtesy of Shining3D)

If you’re anything like this author, you got a C- in high school chemistry and never looked back. With a newfound interest in the topic, I’m hoping to revisit the molecular science of some of the most popular materials in 3D printing to understand them—not just in terms of applications and physical properties, but chemical makeup.

In our first installment in this series, we looked at PAEK plastics, given their popularity in demanding, high-performance applications. Here we look at a specific form of polyurethane from 3D printing unicorn Carbon. What’s worth considering about Carbon’s materials and why they deserve special consideration is that, through the use of a post-print heating step, further physical properties are activated, rendering these photopolymers with characteristics akin to thermoplastics.

Polyurethanes are rubber-like materials, with about 75 percent of the world’s use of the going toward rigid and flexible foams. Applications include upholstery, foam seals and gaskets, elastomeric wheels and tires, automotive suspension bushings, and more. While there are thermoplastic polyurethanes, most polyurethanes are thermosets, meaning they don’t melt when heated. In 3D printing, thermosets are the domain of vat photopolymerization technologies, which harden photopolymer resins using ultraviolet light.

Polyurethanes are created via reactions between isocyanates, a class of chemicals made from derivatives of ammonia called amines, and polyols, organic materials with multiple groups of oxygen bonded to hydrogen. The polylols contribute to the flexibility of the polymer and the amount of crosslinking determines how tough or rigid

Polyurethane synthesis, in which the urethane groups NH−(C=O)−O− connect molecular units.

it is. While long chains with low crosslinking result in a stretchy material, short chains with a great deal of crosslinks result in a hard one. Long chains with intermediate crosslinking create a polymer that can be useful for foam materials.

In the production of polyurethanes, the isocyanates reacts with water to create urethane and urea bonds. In the case of Carbon’s RPU 130, a rigid polyurethane, these bonds are necessary for the resulting physical properties. Jason Rolland, senior vice president of Materials at Carbon, explained to 3DPrint.com, “RPU 130 is a rigid dual-cure polyurethane-urea material. The presence of urethane and urea bonds in the material allow for significant hydrogen bonding to occur. This gives the material a high degree of toughness as well as a high softening temperature.”

Carbon’s Digital Light Synthesis (DLS) technology is a company-specific form of digital light projection (DLP), in which ultraviolet light is cast onto a vat of photopolymer resin and, through the use of an oxygen-permeable window, cures the material continuously at a rapid rate. This process enables isotropic physical properties, that is properties that are the same in all directions of the part.

Whereas most photopolymers used in 3D printing result in weak, brittle parts more suitable for prototyping, components made with DLS feature engineering-grade mechanical characteristics due to a heating step that is applied once the printing process is complete. Carbon explained how this works:

“Dual-cure materials developed by Carbon, including RPU 130, are a blend of photocurable and thermally curable chemistries,” Rolland said. “The photocurable groups activate and polymerize during printing when the resin is exposed repeatedly to patterned UV light. This allows us to precisely define the shape of the part during printing. The thermally active groups are triggered during the post bake, forming a separate polymer network. The final properties of the material are determined by both the UV and thermal polymer networks.”

Because of the aforementioned issues with photopolymers, they have, historically, not been suitable for end part production via 3D printing. Advances from companies like Carbon, however, are changing that. Carbon told 3DPrint.com that the properties of photopolymers results in an attempt to balance impact strength and thermal characteristics, which is less of an obstacle for thermoplastics.

“A key challenge for UV curable materials is the tradeoff between impact strength and thermal properties. Generally, you need to pick one. Thermoplastics like nylon do a better job of balancing these properties. RPU 130 is unique in that it has very high impact strength (>30 J in Gardner impact test) and a high heat deflection temperature (120 oC),” Rolland explained. “The combination of properties realized with RPU 130 makes it highly differentiated in the space of additive manufacturing; it is a great substitute for common thermoplastics like ABS, nylon, or polypropylene for a variety of applications. Low-volume automotive part production involving notable cost savings has been demonstrated using RPU 130 and Carbon’s technology. Other examples of potential industrial and consumer product applications for RPU 130 include air ducts and brake caliper covers for vehicles, sunglasses, tool housings, and device enclosures.”

As we have discussed elsewhere, there is an urgent need to shift our plastics production from fossil fuel derived sources to renewable sources. There are numerous research endeavors underway that seek to develop plant-based photopolymers for 3D printing, many of which show great promise.

A pipe holder fastener 3D printed by assembly technology manufacturer ARaymond for automotive production. Image courtesy of Carbon.

Until those materials can be scaled to commercial levels, companies like Carbon are attempting to use more renewable stock for their materials. Rolland said of Carbon’s rigid polyurethane:

“Nearly 30% of RPU 130 is composed of a plant-derived raw material called Susterra propanediol, a raw material produced by DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products that is derived from corn. This is directly in line with Carbon’s commitment to principles of sustainability in the development of new materials. New polymer material innovations can go hand-in-hand with environmentally conscious principles. RPU 130 shows that enhanced material performance and improved material sustainability do not have to be opposing goals. Plant-derived raw materials generally have a lower carbon footprint than petroleum-derived materials, and Susterra propanediol—which is a USDA certified 100% Bio-based product—produces 48% less greenhouse gas emissions and uses 46% less nonrenewable energy from cradle-to-gate compared to conventional petroleum-based alternatives.”

ASTM International’s additive manufacturing (AM) technologies committee is developing a new standard that will help with data registration in AM processes to extract and characterize process signatures used to control variations in powder spreading, melt-pool geometry, thermal stability, layer integrity, and more.

The nonprofit standards development organization develops and publishes technical standards for a range of industries, materials, products, services, and systems around the globe. The latest is the proposed creation of a common, open method to collect, process, and organize different AM data types collected by measurement devices used for monitoring laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) processes and inspecting the resulting AM parts.

According to Shaw C. Feng, a member of ASTM International and technical lead for the proposed standard, industrial additive manufacturing users have just begun to understand the importance of multi-sensor, dataset registration in control processes, and qualifying parts.

The standard focuses on functions that monitor and control LPBF processes, predict the material properties of the final part, and qualify other well-known part-quality requirements. All of these functions require registered datasets to be executed accurately. These datasets are generated from a variety of sources, including melt-pool images, scan paths, layer images, and XCT 3D models.

In fact, Feng—an expert in manufacturing metrology and a mechanical engineer in the Life Cycle Engineering Group in the Systems Integration Division of the Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)— believes industrial additive manufacturers need data registration to extract and characterize process signatures that are used to control variations in powder spreading, melt-pool geometry, thermal stability, layer integrity, and part quality. Among the potential users of this new standard are sensors and software developers, researchers, and AM technology users.

“Registration of these datasets covers metadata, data cleansing, correction, and identification,” explained Feng. “This proposed standard comprises action that users need to take to register those datasets and store them in a repository. In general, each dataset is associated with specific functions in the product life cycle. This standard focuses on two of those functions: build and inspect.”

Standards for additive manufacturing. (Image courtesy of ASTM International)

Datasets associated with the build and inspect functions include, but are not limited to, sensor data, scan commands, photographic images, thermal images, video clips, X-ray computed tomography 2D images and 3D models, CAD models, CMM point clouds, acoustic signals, accelerations, build information, part property data, material microstructural data, mechanical testing data, build data, equipment data, and production management data. More specifically, the data objects that need registration include in-situ photogrammetry and thermography and ex-situ X-ray computed tomography (XCT).

According to Feng, there are three potential impacts of the proposed standard. First, more software tools for data analytics and AM product lifecycle engineering can be used easily. Second, more robust validation and certification processes for aerospace and medical industries will be available. Third, cost savings in data management, curation, and access will increase.

A standard developed to register datasets is expected to speed up usage and AM capabilities, strengthening the technology and facilitating processes for users. The clear benefits of registering data are accessing validated data with known time, locations, and approvals; data alignment and fusion for process monitoring and control; detecting defects traceable to process, material, equipment parameters; AM part qualification, and understanding the AM process for developing predictive models.

ASTM is developing new standards for additive manufacturing. (Image courtesy of ASTM International)

According to 3DPrint.com’s own Executive Editor and Vice President of Consulting at SmarTech Analysis, Joris Peels, “Data collection, process monitoring, and control are the very frontier of the industrialization of AM. Universally accepted data standards are needed now to make sure that capture software, management systems, analytics software and machines all speak the same language. For part traceability, especially important in aerospace, data exchange, logging, and capture should be seamless.”

Throughout the last decade, ASTM International has been responsible for creating several AM standards that helped shape the growth and development of the industry. Examples include a standard that offers detailed specifications around what customers should look and ask for when buying an AM part, or a general guide providing requirements and recommendations for using the disruptive technology in product design.

Currently, ASTM’s additive manufacturing committee has invited all interested parties to join in the development of this newly proposed standard and others under development. The global organization thrives on close collaborations that are crucial to ensure that standards and specifications support, and do not limit, the continued growth of emerging industries like AM.

WASHINGTON, DC — Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told local business partners across the country that his goal is to build an organization that serves customers better and provides a platform for business growth.

“My vision is to establish the Postal Service as the preferred delivery service for the American public. I am committed to providing world-class affordable and dependable service to every American home and business six and seven days a week — today, tomorrow and for generations to come,” DeJoy said during a National Postal Customer Council (PCC) Day virtual event on Sept. 22.

“To achieve this vision, we are now building business plans against a portfolio of ambitious initiatives. Some of our goals require legislative and regulatory changes, but many do not. Those things that we control, we will pursue thoughtfully and with urgency following the election, as that remains our No. 1 priority for the next six weeks,” he added.

DeJoy said the future of the Postal Service will be defined by the following:

• Universal access to the digital economy, with enhanced destination and storefront services across the nation;
• The most professional, efficient, trusted and visible delivery services in the marketplace — driven by significantly greater operational precision;
• A winning culture — one that champions employee advancement, engagement and collaboration; and celebrates diversity and inclusion;
• Innovative, cost-effective platforms to power business customer growth; and
• Greater revenue diversity, revenue growth and financial sustainability.

The Postmaster General’s full remarks are available in this video from the event.

National PCC Day provides a venue to share best mailing and shipping practices, as well as giving PCCs around the country the opportunity to connect and learn from each other. PCCs are a grassroots network that provides a channel for USPS business mailers and the Postal Service to continue building upon their relationships, so they can grow the mail and work on solving common concerns and challenges.

Each year, PCC Leadership Awards are presented by the Postal Service in recognition of exemplary work achieved to strengthen and grow the PCC network. 

Top honors were presented to PCC groups that achieved overall excellence in their efforts to serve their communities. The PCCs offered innovative solutions for unique concerns during a year that has created greater challenges for businesses of all sizes.

• PCC of the Year — Metro Market                       Fort Worth PCC                        
• PCC of the Year — Large Market                       South Jersey PCC                                               
• PCC of the Year — Small Market                       Greater Wilmington (NC) Area PCC

Alfred Santos (Sierra Coastal PCC) received the 2020 District Manager of the Year Award. Santos was recognized for his consistent leadership, support and active involvement in all PCCs in his district.

Greater Baltimore PCC received the 2020 Mentor of the Year Award for support and guidance provided to other PCCs to help them perform at higher levels and become more successful.

Greater Philadelphia PCC was recognized with the 2020 Up and Comer Award for implementing initiatives that propel the chapter to thrive in all areas.

In addition, the following categories recognized winners with Gold, Silver or Bronze awards:

PCC Postal Member of the Year honors went to postal employees who excelled in their efforts with their local PCCs.

• Gold                 Mark Janda (Twin Cities PCC)
• Silver                Richard Fermo  (Tampa Bay Suncoast PCC)
• Bronze              Vencent Quaglia (Santa Ana District PCC)                                 

PCC Industry Member of the Year award winners are tireless supporters of the Postal Service, constantly advocating postal products and services.

• Gold                 Darren Lawlor (Tampa Bay Suncoast PCC)
• Silver                Kathy Hall (Houston PCC)
• Bronze              Vivian LaRosa (Greater Hartford PCC)

Innovation of the Year is presented to PCCs that demonstrates out-of-the-box thinking and implement creative ideas that can be replicated by all PCCs.

• Gold                 Detroit PCC
• Silver                Greater Dallas PCC
• Bronze              Fairfield County CT PCC

Communication Excellence is awarded to PCCs that excel in implementing effective and creative communication programs using various touchpoints to reach their members.

• Gold                 Tampa Bay Suncoast PCC
• Silver                Twin Cities PCC
• Bronze              Greater Portland PCC

Education Excellence is given to PCCs that have incorporated unique educational topics, speakers and workshops to increase knowledge within their PCC.

• Gold                 Fort Worth PCC
• Silver                Northeast Florida PCC
• Bronze              Hawaii PCC

Membership Excellence Award recognizes PCCs that implement strategies to grow membership and keep members engaged.

• Gold                 Fort Worth PCC
• Silver                Detroit PCC
• Bronze              Greater St. Louis PCC

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

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