{"id":44624,"date":"2023-02-20T16:00:37","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/?p=44624"},"modified":"2023-02-20T16:54:16","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T15:54:16","slug":"3d-printed-basketball-wilson-nba-20022023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/3d-printed-basketball-wilson-nba-20022023\/","title":{"rendered":"3D-Printed Airless Basketball Features in NBA Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">3D printing offers great potential in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/top-10-3d-printing-sport-131120174\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sport<\/a>, from the improvement of accessibility by making prostheses designed for exercise, to making high-performance equipment and accessories to help elite athletes win big. In a first, the company responsible for providing the official NBA basketball, Wilson, has created the \u2018Wilson Airless Prototype\u2019, a 3D-printed basketball which the user does not need to inflate before use! THis 3D-printed creation has a surface of hexagonal holes which allow air to pass in and out of the structure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The team worked with General Lattice, a computational design company, who helped them make the prototype design. Wilson them employed EOS 3D printing to turn the stl file into a printed basketball. As mentioned in the video, they use <a href=\"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/selective-laser-sintering100420174\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SLS<\/a> technology. Finally, the team used smoothing (a type of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/post-processing-ranking-291020204\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">post-processing<\/a> which involves making the surfaces smooth and uniform) and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/dyemansion-and-stratasys-jointly-create-reference-architecture-040520215\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">DyeMansion<\/a> dye to penetrate and react with the polymeric surface.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><center><\/center><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dnZomXATXZM\" width=\"700\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">While a prototype, this basketball is by no means just an idea which will not see the light of day. In fact, this ball has already made its debut. On Saturday night (18th February), the ball was used by Houston Rockets winger KJ Martin during the first round of the AT&amp;T Slam Dunk Contest, an annual NBA competition in which players compete to perform the best slam dunks (a type of goal in basketball).<\/p><div class=\"dnati-inside-article-leaderboard\" style=\"text-align: center;\" id=\"dnati-2151400810\"><a data-no-instant=\"1\" href=\"https:\/\/app.swapcard.com\/login\/event\/additiv-defense-2026\/ticket\/VGlja2V0VHlwZV83MDM4MQ==\/page\/UmVnaXN0cmF0aW9uRm9ybV81NjE4Ng==\" rel=\"noopener\" class=\"a2t-link\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"LB\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/03\/LB.gif\" alt=\"\"  width=\"850\" height=\"150\"   \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">According to Bob Thurman, Vice President of Innovation at Wilson, the firm took care to produce a ball which the user would actually want to use: if the player doesn&#8217;t want to use the basketball in their sport, it is a wasted product. Kevin Kryziak, Senior Director of R&amp;D, added that the firm strives to use cutting-edge technologies to push the boundaries of what is possible, and to &#8216;<em>change perceptions<\/em>&#8216; of manufacturing and innovation.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-44631 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/02\/3D-printed-basketball.jpg\" alt=\"3D printed basketball\" width=\"700\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/02\/3D-printed-basketball.jpg 700w, https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/02\/3D-printed-basketball-600x343.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/02\/3D-printed-basketball-160x91.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Another key benefit of 3D printing in sport is the ability to make customized devices and equipment. We interviewed startup <a href=\"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/startup3d-personomic-offers-customized-bicycle-grips-130120214\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Personomic<\/a>, a maker of customized bicycle grips which are optimized to the individual hand. While this example refers to normal sport hobbyists, 3D printing is also used for elite athletes, with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/bmw-supports-olympian-athletes-with-3d-printing-230220224\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">German Olympic luge, bobsled, and skeleton teams<\/a> benefiting from BMW&#8217;s 3D printing manufacturing to produce improved sports equipment. Back to the Wilson basketball; while it is currently a prototype, it is certainly an exciting application of the technology. To find out more, you can find Wilson&#8217;s page <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wilson.com\/en-us\/explore\/basketball\/airless-prototype\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">HERE<\/a>. Perhaps someday all basketballs will be 3D printed?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">What do you think of this first 3D-printed basketball? Let us know in a comment below or on our<a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/4987104\/\">\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/3Dnatives\/\">\u00a0Facebook<\/a>, and<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/3Dnatives_en\/\">\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0pages! Don\u2019t forget to sign up for our free weekly<a href=\"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/3d-printing-newsletter\/\">\u00a0Newsletter here<\/a>, the latest 3D printing news straight to your inbox! You can also find all our videos on our<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCMWrNpdLOXa7BffRKXZoaZw\">\u00a0YouTube<\/a>\u00a0channel.<\/p>\n<p>*All photos credit: Wilson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>3D printing offers great potential in sport, from the improvement of accessibility by making prostheses designed for exercise, to making high-performance equipment and accessories to help elite athletes win big. In a first, the company responsible for providing the official&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6095,"featured_media":44639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[124,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-consumer-goods","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6095"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44624"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44638,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44624\/revisions\/44638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}