The skateboard has provided hours of fun for many. The design is fairly efficient for its purpose, sleek and slightly curvy for comfortable foot placement and gliding properties. But the skateboard has not undergone significant redesign since its initial development. Given the new software and manufacturing processes available today, is a 3d printed skateboard possible?

The Curators at the Cooper Hewitt – Smithsonian Design Museum in New York wanted to create an exhibit that highlighted the newer processes in which objects can be made and designed using innovative software and manufacturing methods, such as 3D printing /additive manufacturing.

One of the companies approached to participate in this exhibit was 3D Systems. After some initial brainstorming, the 3D Systems team offered multiple products suitable for the exhibit. One was a structurally efficient, 3d printed skateboard. The team wanted to see how they could change the way a skateboard is designed and produced.

One goal was to create a 3d printed skateboard lighter than others on the market. To reduce weight, the 3D Systems team used solidThinking Inspire to optimize the deck and trucks of a traditional skateboard design.

The team first used Inspire to run multiple optimizations with slightly different load cases and percentages of material retention to find the basic form of the product. In the skateboard’s case, no manufacturing constraints were applied as 3D printing gives users the freedom to manufacture shapes that traditional techniques do not. In all, the team used Inspire to generate 30 different concepts.

Each of these design concepts was then analyzed in Inspire to determine any weak points in the design. After reviewing the concepts the team determined the winning one for the 3d printed skateboard’s deck, as well as trucks.

Once the final concept was selected, the team exported the shape into CAD. They then refined the shape into the final design that was to be 3D printed.

For the production of the 3d printed skateboard, the team turned to its production and professional 3D printing family and its range of materials options. The deck of the board was manufactured with PA-12 Nylon using 3D Systems’ Selective Laser Sintering technology, while the trucks were printed in titanium using Direct Metal Printing.

3D Systems’ Senior Industrial Designer, Seth Astle noted, “Future plans include using Inspire to redesign and print the wheels of the skateboard. We are also working on a second version of the skateboard that will be printed using glass filled nylon. This will be stiffer than the current board, which due to its material is a bit flexible. Other than the slight flexibility, the board rides just like a normal skateboard, but is much lighter. The entire assembly weighs just 3.4 lb, more than 50% lighter than a normal board.”

Pleased with the design capabilities available with Inspire, the 3D Systems team has future plans to use the tool; upcoming projects include a quadcopter design, as well as designing prosthetics. Seth noted, “The software was easy to use and learn. We are always finding new 3D printing projects where we can use Inspire to optimize designs. The best part about Inspire is that it helps us to create new shapes that you would not be able to create any other way, and that you put in all of your parameters, push ‘optimize’ and very quickly a completely unique shape for your product is created.”

Solidthinking Inc.
Solidthinking.com

3D Systems
3dsystems.com