Pure Titanium Racket

Discussion in 'Racket Recommendation / Comparison' started by Asian Troll, Nov 28, 2021.

  1. Asian Troll

    Asian Troll New Member

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    Does anyone have experience or knowledge with pure Titanium Rackets?
    I'm thinking about 3D scanning a Yonex 99Pro and getting it printed out of an SLS Titanium printer.
    I work for a Formula 1 style motorsport company. The SLS printer is made for Formula 1 racing printed parts.
    If I were to make it, it will be the purest titanium racket that anyone can have ever produced. Rather than off-shelve Graphite carbon fiber rackets.

    Any thoughts?
     
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  2. Budi

    Budi Regular Member

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    Few concern on badminton view point without knowing titanium characteristic.

    1. Weight. How much weight the racket would be. 86-90gr are not everyone cup of tea & so does if its over 90gr.
    2. Stiffness. How does the stiffness of Titanium compare to carbon racket.
     
  3. Asian Troll

    Asian Troll New Member

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    The weight of titanium should be the same as carbon fiber, if not lighter.
    Stiffness is the strong point about titanium, depending on treatment, eg, shaft thickness. It can be adjusted to the same flex as carbon fiber.

    I think I will give it a go, maybe introduce a new market to the sport :D

    I heard Kason?(maybe) had tried to develop this idea.
    They gave up due to the material manufacturing technologies are lacking back 10 years ago.

    If this succeeds, pure titanium rackets can easily go for over $1000.

    Cheers
     
  4. kwun

    kwun Administrator

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    that sounds interesting. what Titanium alloy do you plan to use?
     
  5. Asian Troll

    Asian Troll New Member

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    Traditional Metal alloying is melting for example iron and manganese, silicon, vanadium, chromium plus others to give the metal alloy stronger properties to suit whatever purpose.
    Becasue I will be making it out of an SLS titanium printer, alloying is not possible nor not required. The vague idea of how it 3D printer works is it forms titanium powder into the racket shape and curing with laser. That is the final product. Really new technology.
    Cheers
     
  6. endFX

    endFX Regular Member

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    Fascinating project!
    Will it be one piece including the handle?

    How precise is SLS titanium compared to SLS with Polyamid (eg. PA12)?

    I have 2 concerns in this regard:
    1. Making small tube (shaft) is impossible so you probably get a solid shaft. (Does the 99p have a solid shaft anyway like 100zz?)
    2. Holes for strings/grommets may also be impossible/inaccurate. Are you gonna drill those afterwards?
     
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  7. Budi

    Budi Regular Member

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    Even if it success, the next thing is pricing.
    How much the cost of making 1 racket (material + machinery investment) vs carbon fibre.
    If it can be at least equal to current racket, it could be new racket model with new feel & characteristic. & if it does better copyright it rightaway or else YY will release new product & makes it as if its brand new invention & high tech complicated stuff:p
     
  8. Martynas

    Martynas Regular Member

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    the real Thor hammer in the making :D
     
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  9. Asian Troll

    Asian Troll New Member

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    We do have an HP SLS that mainly prints PA12. Currently, I say it is the best machine in the market right now, tolerance is about +-3%. We use it for prototyping before printing Titanium with another machine. The titanium printer costs more than a million dollars, you can imagine how the tolerance for that is a bit lower.

    Holo shaft with an inside diameter is possible, can even go for the full length by adding cross-section patterns inside the shaft for different benefits depending on cross-section designs. Definitely, something that is impossible with carbon fiber.
    Grommet holes can be pickup by the 3D scanner and precisely replicated and add gourmets afterward.
     
  10. Asian Troll

    Asian Troll New Member

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    Yes, it will be very expensive indeed.
    At the moment, I'm more interested in seeing if there will be an advantage difference compared to carbon fiber rackets because no one has ever done it before.

    Get some pros to play with it, collect feedback. Perhaps maybe a personalised custom builds for pros path rather than mass produce.
     
  11. Asian Troll

    Asian Troll New Member

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    Error: +- 0.3%. Say Racket Head is 10mm thick. Printing with HP printer will be 10.03mm thick at max.
    Cheers
     
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  12. Asian Troll

    Asian Troll New Member

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    The HP printer is called MJF printer for fellow 3D printing enthusiasts.
     
  13. Budi

    Budi Regular Member

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    it might be dead end i guest if your target are for profit. Pros get their racket for free or can be said they get paid for playing with selected racket for them.
    The brand get us badminton lovers attention. Attract us to buy their racket with added salt here & there through their so called high tech new invention.

    So asking player to buy it might be a challange especially if it cost alot. Even if you give player for free, you wont get any selling if its cost ridicilously expensive. Maybe 5 or 10 for them who pretty much curious & quite wealthy but just it & no more.
     
  14. Asian Troll

    Asian Troll New Member

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    My intention was not for profit, more enthusiastic about seeing if there an advantage with different materials. Titanium is expensive and it has a huge advantage with motorsport compared to say aluminum and carbon fiber.

    In the cycling, tennis or motorsport world. Tinny things like these do determine winning. That's where the custom build market is soo expensive.
    A prime example is tennis player Novak Djokovic, a video about it on YouTube about his customized rackets.

    Again, I'm no where near to the level of 'hey I'm going to start a business and make money'. Sorry if my words offended you, I'm not coming from greed.

    Pure curious if titanium rackets will have an advantage or how much of an advantage. If there is a huge advantage and worth the 5-10x value of carbon fiber. Yonex can hire me...haha (joking)

    I will share about it again once I get a prototype going.

    Cheers.

    P.s the handle will not be titanium, it will be wood or polymers. Will also try find out the difference.
     
  15. kwun

    kwun Administrator

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    The Titanium powder used in 3D printing is also an alloy. From bike frame construction, 6Al4V alloy is the stiffest but also most expensive. 3Al2.5V alloy is kinda in the middle, while commercially pure (CP) is softest and produce the lowest quality bike frame. casual googling shows that they all are available for laser sintering.

    For a start, you can run a back of the envelope calculation by referencing density of carbon fiber (which runs around 2g/cm3) and density of Ti (which runs around 4.5g/cm3). So to preserve the similar weight and balance, you can only use around 45% of the material volume. let's call that half.

    Most badminton rackets are almost solid, baring a little bit of void in the middle core of the frame/shaft due to the carbon rolling/forming process. So to get around 45% the material volume there will have to be a larger void/emptiness in the middle of the frame/shaft. Which fortunately will be acceptable as most of the force is bear by the outer layers.

    To go into further back of the envelope analysis. Even if you have replicate the shape and form of a carbon racket using 3D printed Ti, the stiffness matter. Young's modulus of carbon fiber can be in the region of 228GPa (again from casual googling), while 6Al4V Ti is only 120GPa. This will be an issue for a Ti racket.

    Having approx half the stiffness means the racket will feels like a soft noodle when played with. And since you are also constrained by weight, the only way to make a racket feel stiffer is to increase the diameter of all tubing. Luckily, stiffness of a tube increases to the 4th power of the diameter, so you won't need to increase the size by a whole lot in order to make it feel as stiff as a carbon racket. More back of the envelope calculation shows that 20% increase in diameter will double the stiffness.

    What is going to be an issue is that now suddenly your tube walls are going to be much thinner, after already using 45% of the material volume. There will be issue with durability. furthermore, a 20% thicker tubing all around will have significantly more aerodynamic drag, 20% more area means 20% more drag.

    So all in all, there will be some compromises when moving from Carbon to Ti. 2 major factors contraints your final product, weight and stiffness. To keep the same weight and stiffness, you will end up with a racket with hollow tubing with thin walls and higher aerodynamic drag, all in the cost of having no improvement in weight nor stiffness.

    But the coolness factor will be absolutely awesome.
     
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  16. Asian Troll

    Asian Troll New Member

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    This is really good feedback Thank you!

    Yes, using titanium is going to be an immense amount of work with calculations, material science, stress analysis, and more.
    I agree, replicating an existing model will never turn out the same with different materials such as Ti.
    But it is a good starting point to identify those differences and come up with a new design to make the racket playable along with utilizing Ti benefits.

    Hence why I'm here to see if anyone else has done it before and the reason for giving up. Hoping I can get decent feedback before I start and not even know if there will be any advantages.
     
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  17. kwun

    kwun Administrator

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    Another point of reference is aluminum. In the old days we used to have racket head made of Aluminum. Aluminum has a density of 2g/cm3, which is similar to carbon fiber, but only a Youngs modulus of 68GPa. Which is ~1/2 of Ti and ~1/4 of CF. However, Al rackets are rather soft and they show visual deformation after stringing 20+lbs. rackets were 2U then. So if you keep the same thickness, you will end up with a stiffer but also much heavier racket. So again, the wall thickness will have to be thinner in order to shave off some weight. then the stiffness goes down!

    You see the problem now? of course, you should do the modelling and simulation and see how well it will work out. Seems like quite an involved project. keep us updated!
     
  18. endFX

    endFX Regular Member

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    Wow, that must be an impressive machine.

    I envy you to have access to such an incredible (and expensive) tool. ;)
     

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