It’s September 2013 and a feltcovered rubber ball is being zipped forwards and backwards throughout a tennis courtroom by what’s now thought of to be the 2 most profitable males to ever play the game.
Contained in the USTA Billie Jean King Nationwide Tennis Heart, Rafael Nadal crashes a 100+mph serve right down to Novak Djokovic’s lefthand facet, just for the Serb to return with a double backhand. Fifty-two extra photographs are knocked forwards and backwards, with solely the occasional sliced dropshot breaking the succession of grunts and thuds because the pair compete in one of many sport’s most well-known rallies.
These grunts stem from two fierce rivals harnessing each little bit of their energy to beat the opposite, however the thud emanates from a tiny piece of silicone rubber clipped onto the decrease central strings of the rackets.
Djokovic, Nadal, and an estimated 75% of the 90 million tennis gamers worldwide depend on these bits of silicone rubber to scale back the shock upon affect and tune the sound right into a thud somewhat than an irritating ping.
In Italy, an organization leveraging additive manufacturing know-how to reinforce shopper and sporting items has seen the tennis racket dampener as a possibility. For the place there’s a half that absorbs shock, there’s usually a task for additive to play. Additive Home equipment thus developed a patent-pending lattice construction, which is claimed to work in a lot the identical approach as a tuned mass damper does in giant buildings. Designed to imitate the vibration of the construction it’s embedded in whereas ‘accommodating the motion to dampen the vibration,’ the dampener is claimed to intercept vibrations that may trigger inflammatory points, whereas additionally permitting gamers to ‘really feel the hit’ as they strike a ball.
“What we do is we’ve a set of lattice construction that we are able to simulate fairly seamlessly,” mentioned Tommaso Beccuti, CEO of Additive Home equipment. “We simulate the behaviour of this lattice construction, and we goal the pure frequency of every racket system.”
Focusing on the pure frequency of every racket system with tailor-made dampener merchandise was one thing that tennis racket producer Head1 outlined as vital throughout a examine undertaken in 2009. Doing that with injection moulding, nevertheless, was at all times going to show tough. However with 3D printing, Additive Home equipment is assured it will probably tweak the design of its dampeners to swimsuit every model and mannequin of racket, and achieve this in an economically viable approach, to complement its already obtainable ‘common product’.
Throughout each the common and brandspecific tennis racket dampeners, Additive Home equipment is deploying its lattice IP to ‘scatter the vibration’ by means of the myriad beams and nodes that the lattice is made up of. By channelling the forces by means of these paths, the vitality is dissipated. In accordance with the literature that Beccuti has studied, there’s a perception that lattices proffer superior dampening properties to the conventionally formed merchandise. This has chimed with Additive Home equipment, who has endeavoured to dive deep into the design area to generate options for a spread of shopper and sporting items, amongst them the tennis racket dampener.
“We focus primarily on lattice buildings. All our different purposes that we’ve completed are associated to the so-called metamaterial – you act not on the microscale of objects, you don’t take the issue from a specialty chemistry standpoint, however you somewhat work on the mesoscale, so speaking about microns, millimetres, and you modify the form of the article in order that he can truly obtain sure properties. That may be thermal properties, mechanical properties, like on this case, but in addition electromagnetic properties. It’s very attention-grabbing. To me, it is likely one of the most fun areas of 3D printing, alongside bioprinting. When it comes to easy approaches to mechanics, I believe metamaterial has an enormous potential.”
Additive Home equipment’ tennis racket dampener is additively manufactured utilizing HP’s Multi Jet Fusion know-how, with the construct quantity of the 5200 platform mentioned to be able to processing hundreds of elements without delay. The elements, printed in BASF’s Ultrasint TPU materials, measure between round 15 to twenty millimetres, and weigh lower than 1 gram – as much as 70% lighter than the minimal mass requirement of a standard dampener.
For the design of the elements, Additive Home equipment has leant on a set of internally developed equations which are remodeled into CAD designs by means of implicit modelling software program, akin to Altair’s Sulis platform, with the equations being validated utilizing superior simulation methods like Optimad Engineering’s proprietary software program, earlier than intensive in-house testing is carried out with vibrometers and sound spectrum analysers. Publish-print, chemical smoothing might help to reinforce the aesthetics of the half however has no affect on the mechanical properties and so it may be faster and cheaper to forego this step.
Thus far, the 3D printed dampener has come by means of in-house checks at Additive Home equipment with flying colors, with third-party testing now underway. Ranked skilled gamers, akin to Federico Gaio – who sometimes desire to not use a dampener – have additionally supplied constructive suggestions. And, Beccuti informed TCT, Additive Home equipment is within the technique of spinning out the product into its personal firm, with plenty of traders serving to to arrange a enterprise referred to as Athleticae to provide an additional push to the tennis racket dampener, earlier than different purposes are explored.
When it comes to the tennis racket dampener, it’s anticipated gross sales of its common product will proceed through an e-commerce platform, whereas a reseller community is to be developed. Requests for licensing will at all times be listened to, however Becutti’s choice could be – in an ideal world – that there is no such thing as a exclusivity. He concedes that the 3D printed tennis racket dampener is barely dearer than a conventionally made one, however there’s confidence {that a} superior efficiency will guarantee worth for cash. Buoyed by a few different latest excessive quantity shopper purposes, Becutti is pondering huge.
“The actual goal is thousands and thousands of items,” Becutti mentioned. “Let me be formidable right here. I believe the know-how is prepared for that. We [as an industry] produce other use instances. The mascara brush from Dior, I believe, is probably the most well-known one and it’s once more a small element. Now we’ve the very constructive instance of Apple producing the Apple Watch in binder jetting. [The technology
is] maturing and it’s an thrilling second. We’re lastly pushing the boundaries of producing and getting not less than slightly bit nearer to conventional manufacturing.”
