From prototyping to materials science, sports equipment has more in common with the aerospace and automotive industries than you might think.
Wherever you look, the story of 3D printing adoption tends to follow a similar arc across industries. It begins with prototyping, followed by a small set of niche use cases, eventually culminating in end-use parts and, sometimes, mass production. Examples of this pattern of development can be found in aerospace, automotive, and even sports equipment.
That last one may not get as much attention as the other two — probably because the industry is only a fraction of their size — but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth talking about. Sure, we hear a lot about 3D printing for the Olympics or when there’s some new innovation in bicycle manufacturing, but there are plenty of more mundane examples in sports equipment that highlight the challenges and opportunities for additive manufacturing (AM).
The Past – 3D Printed Prototypes and Customization
“Most of these companies, depending on what they make, have a one- or two-year product release cycle,” says Jon Walker, key account manager at EOS. “Given that the development cycle is every 12 months, the ability to iterate very quickly in the prototyping phase is invaluable.”
Perhaps the best recent example of this is Wilson’s airless basketball, introduced in 2023. According to Walker, the project went from concept to prototype to reality in just a few months. “The feedback loop between General Lattice and Wilson was intense,” he recalls. “Parts were built in Texas, sent to Ohio for testing and the results were used to re-optimize the CAD file. The speed and the amount of work we accomplished really showed how digitalization and rapid prototyping can drastically shorten development cycles.”
Sports equipment also offers plenty of examples of another major benefit of AM: customization. Walker cited the 2012 Summer Olympics and a project involving EOS and athletic shoemaker New Balance. The companies measured the US running team’s gaits using high-speed cameras and other sensors to design bespoke outsole patterns for each athlete’s cleats. “A quarter-second advantage, gained by optimizing your track spike to the way your foot rolls across the track could be the difference between first and last place,” he says, “especially in events like the 100 meters.”
In many respects, the sports equipment industry is similar to automotive and aerospace: highly competitive, highly regulated and constantly striving for advantages through cutting-edge innovation. However, unlike these other industries, its relatively small size means that it needs to take a different approach to research and development. By taking advantage of the technological leadership in aerospace and automotive, the sports industry can essentially “draft” behind them, like cyclists or speedskaters exploiting a leader’s slipstream.
“This isn’t new,” says Walker, citing the late hockey equipment designer Brian Heaton as an example. “He lived in Windsor, Ontario and was familiar with the automotive industry. That’s how he knew about synthetic leathers with hydrophobic properties, which was revolutionary at the time. Before the early 1980s, goalie pads were literally cowhide stuffed with horse hair because the hockey industry alone just wasn’t big enough to convince a company like DuPont to design these materials from scratch.”
The Present – Additive Manufacturing Materials and Software
As is often the case with 3D printing in other industries, engineers designing sports equipment for additive manufacturing need to strike a balance between revising CAD models and adjusting material properties. However, because sports equipment manufacturing is considerably smaller than other AM users — such aerospace, medical or automotive — the industry’s ability to drive innovation in materials science and software development is proportionally diminished.
Nevertheless, there have still been significant advancements in both these areas when it comes to sports equipment. “We recently added PEBA to our portfolio of polymer materials,” says Walker. Polyether block amide, known under the trade names of PEBAX and VESTAMID E, is a thermoplastic elastomer that’s about as well known and widely used in sports equipment as Kevlar is in defense.
“It’s been used in the sports industry for years, but no one was able to powderize it and 3D print it,” Walker adds. “So, for us, PEBA is really exciting. The fact that it’s a family of materials means it can hit different niches. For example, a really soft PEBA could replace certain foams, while a really stiff PEBA might be able to replace certain hard plastics.”
When it comes to engineering software for additive manufacturing, the story in sports equipment is a familiar one: “You design something, you think you know what material to make it in, but you don’t actually know how the material will act in a specific shape or what the performance will be,” explains Walker. “A lot of software companies, like General Lattice for example, are doing real-world physical testing and then incorporating that data back into their software. So now, if you pick a gyroid lattice and a certain material, the software will give you a rough estimation of the performance.”
Eliminating (or at least reducing) the need to 3D print different versions of the same part in different materials for physical testing saves on development time as well as cost. Fortunately for engineers working in sports equipment, this is another improvement that’s being driven by the much larger aerospace and automotive industries.
The Future – AM Sports Equipment for Amateurs
We’ve covered two of the three major steps in 3D printing adoption: prototyping and niche use cases. What about mass production, the third and most difficult hurdle to clear? How close is the average consumer to ordering customized footwear based on their natural gait? On the one hand, mass customization is something AM excels at and it’s especially sought after in sports equipment as opposed to aircraft or automobiles, where the demand for bespoke products is limited to the rare few who can afford them.
As Walker points out, “No two body parts are the same, and I think everyone has had a pair of shoes, a hat, a helmet, or a glove that just didn’t fit right and made the product uncomfortable to wear.” Interestingly, the challenge here is the same one facing 3D printing adoption in the automotive, aerospace and medical industries: regulation.
“Almost every piece of sports equipment in a store is regulated somehow,” he says. “It could be size, like a maximum size for a baseball glove, or safety standards like the NOCSAE standard for batting helmets, the CSA and HECC standards for hockey helmets, or the NFL’s own rigorous testing standard for football helmets. Traditionally, you’d test small, medium, and large sizes, or in footwear, sizes 10, 11, and 12, and validate that they work. But with 3D printing, where each iteration can be different, how do you test all those variations?”
The current approach involves validating some subset of sizes from across the available range, but it’s still novel and likely oversimplified. Walker noted that there are only a handful of products that have been validated this way. “The real issue is defining the boundaries because there are still limits,” he says. “You’re not going to make a golf club that’s 10 feet wide because no one could swing it. But moving a few millimeters in either direction can make a big difference, and no one wants to deal with the USGA’s approval process for 300 different permutations.”
Regulatory challenges aside, Walker remains optimistic about the future of AM in sports equipment, in part because of its connections to other industries. “If someone could unlock a high-strength 3D printed nylon that meets automotive requirements, it could close the gap in sports equipment,” he says. “I’ve heard aerospace companies say the golf shaft industry gets all the cool composites, and I’ve heard golf shaft companies say aerospace is where all the development is. There’s a lot of symbiosis in sports equipment and other industries, even if they don’t realize it.”
