Creating top of the line sports gear with the push of a button. A local 3D printer company is helping name brand companies do just that.
Could the future of sports be in 3d printing?
“This feels just like a real football,” said New England Patriots punter Bryce Baringer as he kicked a 3D printed football.
Baringer put several 3D-printed footballs to the test. Some were similar to the real pig skin---others not so much. The creations all made possible at the Formlabs headquarters in Somerville. The company manufactures two types of 3D printers—resin-based and powder-based—and sells them to companies.
“3D printing is, you know, quickly becoming a default manufacturing method for, pretty much every type of business,” said Mike Baker, Formlabs Global Head of Brand and Communications. “It just provides a lot of benefits that traditional manufacturing doesn’t produce.”
A big one being the cost. Back in the 80′s one printer cost a half a million dollars. Now, Formlabs says it sells theirs starting around $3,000—making it affordable for most companies to buy... And personalize.
“Any company that’s making a physical thing, 3D printing has just become a much easier way to do the first the prototype or even up to like a thousand or a 10,000 of something,” said Baker.
To make the manufacturing process more effective, companies can buy a 3D printer and with the touch of a button, they can customize any product. From personalized New Balance shoes to testing out helmets, sports companies are jumping into the 3d printing ring to create new and better products.
“Complex lattices or internal geometry, it just gives a lot more freedom to try, you know, different things like this that would not be following the same thing that we’ve done for hundreds or hundreds of years, because that’s the only way that you could make them before,” said Baker.
The 3D printed prototype helps companies determine whether it can withstand the pressure of a car rolling over a football or the pressure of the constant changing and improving sports equipment landscape.
“Sports is a multi-billion dollar industry,” said Baker. “Lots of people are looking for every single edge that they can give athletes, and they’re using our printers to bring more innovative products to design things that are more custom, more personalized, or new products that actually can, like change the way that a sport is played or the way that consumers play a sport.”
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