3D Printed Mold Tools Deliver a Home Run in Baseball Bat Development
The Challenge
Every year, DeMarini Sports launches at least 40 new aluminum baseball bats that meet safety regulations and quality standards expected by their customers. To deliver these new design, they use injection molding. However, creating detailed molds that meet DeMarini needs using tradition tooling is a barrier to innovation, with incredibly long design cycles, high costs, and low potential for iterations.
The Solution
Utilizing Fortify’s unique Continuous Kinetic Mixing printing process on the FLUX ONE 3D printer using a customized variant of LOCTITE 3D IND147 HDT230, DeMarini was able to a leverage 3D printed mold tools while shaving weeks off the development cycle with the freedom to iterate without fear of failure or missed market timelines.
Benefits
- Reduced lead time and tooling costs
- Achieve level of fine details difficult to obtain with traditional tooling, including surface features up to 250 um
- High heat deflection temperature suitable for injection molding applications
- Avoided Electrical Discharge Machining by incorporating aesthetic patterns into the mold
Developed together with
