Industrial designer Darius Zalzadeh has received numerous international awards for his work in the field of 3D printing. He has been working with additive manufacturing for over ten years, using it not only to print his digitally designed concepts as prototypes, but also to transform them into functional products. “For me, a 3D printer is far more than just my absolute favourite tool – it is a central component of my creative design process,” says Zalzadeh.
His designs combine technical expertise with functional design and aesthetic appeal, demonstrating the potential of additive manufacturing. Darius Zalzadeh attracted particular attention with one of his latest projects, the Wire Stripper Pro – a pair of pliers for stripping cables that is almost entirely 3D-printable. At the end of 2025, he was recognised for the first time for this project at the international WAGO Creators Design Competition organised by the technology company WAGO. Even after this win, Zalzadeh continued to work specifically on optimising the product, for example by adjusting the stripping length for WAGO Series 221 connection terminals, incorporating a scale to determine different cable cross-sections, and reducing friction in the moving parts. At the same time, he developed another tool that enables the production of steel springs using simple means. Two of the springs produced in this way are later used in the pliers.
His work was also recognised on several occasions at the Printables Awards 2025 ceremony, which took place recently. There, he received the People’s Choice Award in the ‘Practical and Functional Design’ category for his product and was additionally honoured as ‘Model of the Year’.
Zalzadeh is currently particularly active on Prusa Research’s Printables platform, where he publishes his 3D models and shares them with the 3D printing community under the name “Da_Rius”.
Professionally, he works as a research assistant in the Design Department at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and is also involved in the SDG+ Lab at the University of Kassel. He also works as a freelance designer. In this role, he not only develops and constructs 3D models and prototypes, but also provides practical advice to companies and supports them in integrating additive manufacturing effectively into their processes.