The bleeding edge of additive manufacturing will be on display for the Summer Olympic Games, but not always in the most obvious places.
Another Olympic Games means another opportunity to see how the science and engineering of summer sports has advanced over the past four years. While there are plenty of obvious examples — high-tech swimsuits, 3D-printed bicycles and even robots — some of the most interesting use cases are also those that are likely to fly under the radar of mass media coverage.
Here are three in particular you might not have heard about.
3D Printed Skatepark
Paris 2024 will be the second time that skateboarding appears on the list of Olympic sports, but it’s already seeing innovation in the form of the Saint-Gobain Skate Game, a 400-square-meter (4,306-square-foot) skate park on the Esplanade de Paris La Défense. Designed to resemble a giant pinball machine, the skate park consists of eight modules that were custom made using 3D concrete printing at the Saint-Gobain Weber Beamix plant in Eindhoven. According to the company, this approach reduced both the necessary amount of raw materials consumed and the amount of carbon dioxide produced.
Open to the public, the park was designed for seasoned athletes, both able-bodied and disabled. Vincent Matheron, a member of the French Skateboard Team, was quoted in a Saint-Gobain press release saying, “With 3D concrete printing, Saint-Gobain is opening up new horizons with never-before-seen modules and a multitude of tricks for those who want to ride the ramps.”
3D Printed Wheelchair Racing Gloves
When it comes to wheelchair racing, gloves might not be the first thing you’d expect to be 3D printed but, according to 8-time Paralympics gold medalist Tatyana McFadden, they’re a game-changer.
“When competing outside, we face various weather conditions, and I want to be ready for anything,” she said in a CRP USA press release. “My gloves have cracked in the past. My strokes produce a lot of force when I hit the hand ring, and my previous gloves lasted less than a year. I also wanted a better way to add rubber to the hand rings. The CRP USA team listened to my needs and managed to satisfy them in the best possible way.”
CRP USA, an NC-based 3D printing service bureau, laser sintered a composite material called Windform XT 2.0 to produce gloves with high strength and durability but which weigh 50% less than gloves made with traditional processes. “I remember using the gloves in Windform XT 2.0 for the very first time on the track and on the road,” McFadden said. “I was so impressed by how light and durable they were. My hands felt so light, it felt like I wasn’t holding onto anything. When I first put my hands into the glove, it was so smooth.”
3D Printed Eiffel Tower
Even though it’s not technically an example of using 3D printing for an Olympic event — or 3D printing at the Paris Olympics per se — this is still worth talking about. The Czech service bureau 3DDen has been hard at work producing a 14-meter (46-foot) replica of the Eiffel Tower for an Olympic festival in the Czech Republic that will be concurrent with the 2024 Paris Games.
According to owner Jan Hřebabecký, the model is made from recycled plastic waste collected from the shores of Thailand. “It has excellent mechanical and chemical qualities, great UV resistance, and it is practically immortal,” Hřebabecký told the Associated Free Press. He estimates that the tower contains the material equivalent of 800,000 plastic bottles.
3DDen had to build a custom 3D printer to handle the recycled filament, which is apparently subject to issues with crystallization that could destroy a conventional setup. For Hřebabecký and his team though, the extra effort is well worth it. “If you build a house using this material, it is almost certain that it will never return to the ocean again,” he said.
