OPTIMAD
Assembly Line
Feel The Hit: Pushing the boundaries of tennis racket manufacturing with 3D printing
Additive Appliances’ tennis racket dampener is additively manufactured using HP’s Multi Jet Fusion technology, with the build volume of the 5200 platform said to be capable of processing thousands of parts at once. The parts, printed in BASF’s Ultrasint TPU material, measure between around 15 to 20 millimetres, and weigh less than 1 gram – up to 70% lighter than the minimal mass requirement of a traditional dampener.
For the design of the components, Additive Appliances has leant on a set of internally developed equations that are transformed into CAD designs through implicit modelling software, such as Altair’s Sulis platform, with the equations being validated using advanced simulation techniques like Optimad Engineering’s proprietary software, before extensive in-house testing is performed with vibrometers and sound spectrum analysers. Post-print, chemical smoothing can help to enhance the aesthetics of the part but has no impact on the mechanical properties and so it can be quicker and cheaper to forego this step.