Historic Golf Clubs Brought Back to Life Via 3D Printing

As some of the world’s top golfers prepare to descend upon Scotland for the 2014 Ryder Cup, researchers from the University of Dundee are celebrating the game’s history with the use of the latest technology.

They have produced the world’s first metal 3D-printed clubhead using irons loaned by the British Golf Museum in St Andrews.

The University’s division of Mechanical & Electrical Engineering teamed up with St Andrews Golf Co. to investigate the process of making high quality, authentic examples of historically important irons, woods and putters using traditional craft methods.

Today’s clubs are created in such a manner that they can be manufactured with ease on modern machinery. St Andrews Golf Co. is the only company in the world to still practice the craft of producing golf clubs by hand, which was once popular across Britain, but has now almost disappeared due to the adoption of modern, digital based production methods.

The company’s Grant Payne, a Product Design graduate of the University, used his skills to convert physical to digital and back again. After 3D scanning the clubs, he used specialist programmes to make accurate digital models of the clubs.

The Mechanical Engineering team then worked with colleagues in academia and industry to ready the model for printing in metal. The clubhead was recreated exactly, including dents, patina & damage collected over its 125 year life.

Grant says the project will hopefully protect these examples of rare and ancient golf clubs, as they are irreplaceable artefacts of great importance to Scotland’s cultural and manufacturing heritage.

“We are delighted to have assisted in the production of the world’s first metal 3D-printed clubhead. The avenues opened up by combining the latest in manufacturing technology with the traditional craftsmanship practiced by St Andrews Golf Co Ltd are exciting. It was only made possible through our Industrial Partnership with the University and we hope it will demonstrate to people we’re thinking about the future, whilst being considerate of the past.” he said.

Read more at ENGINEERING.com

by ENGINEERING.com via Fabbaloo

Silver and 3D Printing: A New Source of Demand?

At the end of July, The Silver Institute released a report called The Outlook for New Electrical and Electronic Uses of Silver. Prepared by Metals Focus, it looks at three potential areas of growth for the white metal: flexible electronics, light-emitting diodes and interposers.

Those are all exciting applications of silver, but they’re definitely not the only new uses of the metal that are garnering attention. Another — perhaps unexpected — arena in which silver is making waves is 3D printing.

Here’s a brief overview of how silver fits into the 3D printing landscape.

In terms of where silver enters the picture, Jeffrey Ellis, The Silver Institute’s senior technology consultant, states in the firm’s most recent newsletter that two types of 3D printing processes involve silver.

The first “is the equivalent of casting silver into a 3D printed mold such as those made of plaster-fortified wax” — in other words, a mold is created using a 3D printer and molten silver is then poured into it. That method is the more common of the two and is used by companies like Sculpteo, i.materialise and New York-headquartered Shapeways, whose goal is to give “anyone the ability to quickly and affordably turn ideas from digital designs into real products.” A quick glance at the company’s website shows that many people are doing just that, using 3D-printed molds to create jewelry, other accessories and more.

The second, which Ellis describes as “direct laser sintering, a process of forming a solid with heat that does not reach the melting point,” involves silver more directly, but is “a relatively new technique that has yet to be widely adopted.” Explaining why that’s the case, he notes that silver’s high reflectivity “is a serious challenge because so little of the light is absorbed to accomplish the fusing.” One company currently working on overcoming that difficulty is Cookson Precious Metals.

Ultimately, that technique may lead to some very interesting uses of silver. Ellis notes that it could allow government and private mints to produce coins and other objects, and will perhaps also be used to manufacture “batteries and other electrical components.”

Read more at ENGINEERING.com

by ENGINEERING.com via Fabbaloo