Challenger Award winners announced at IWF

The seven winners of the Challenger Distinguished Achievement Award were announced Wednesday during IWF 2012 in Atlanta.

The award promotes the development of innovative new technology in woodworking machinery, supplies and services for the furniture, kitchen cabinets, architectural woodwork, store fixture, upholstery, or specialty and general wood product industries. Seventy nine companies entered the 2012 competition.

The winners are:

• Cim-Tech for Solid-CIM 3-D for programming or nesting 3-D solid parts and assemblies from AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor and many other solid modeling products. With one click, CIM-Tech says, nested programs for any CNC machine are created with a cut list of all the parts, materials and quantities.

• Giben America for Prisma 6000 Ecotech panel sizing saw with Ecotech, which allows enhanced machine performance and productivity combined with substantially reduced power consumption and moving mechanical components, according to the company.

• Hafele America Co. for Frontino hardware, which allows sliding doors to sit flush on tracks instead of on separate tracks.

• James L. Taylor Mfg., JLT Clamps and Cameron Automation for the Cameron flooring nester, which automates nesting random-length flooring into bundles ready for strapping.

• Martin Woodworking Machines Corp. for the T75 PreX sliding table saw, which has a saw blade that can be tilted to both sides.

• Miltec UV for gloss control UV finishing, allowing the use of only one UV final topcoat for all gloss ranges from 30 to 80 gloss units, depending on the UV coating formulation, according to the company.

• Techniks for the Atemag Extra Plus Aggregate, which features an oscillating cutting action that reduces the time it takes to cut a mortised lock pocket.