Marius Schueller

Why:
Pickleball is a super fun sport that I've actually been getting into lately. Pickleball paddles are fairly simple and so creating one is fairly straightforward. As much as I would like to take credit for coming up with the idea for this project, this was actually done for my additive manufacturing class.

How:
I desgined the paddle in Fusion 360. It took about 5 hours to design. It's made up of 3 components: the playing surface, handle, and edge guard. The handle is a multimaterial print so that a better grip can be achieved using a flexible tpu material. While I designed this to be printed on a multimaterial printed, this can simply be done with just PLA.


After printing, assembling the design isn't super complicated. The handle is connected to the main part of the paddle using a heat set inserts. Something like gorilla glue might also work, but durability would probably then be an issue. The edge guard simply slides over the handle and you can stretch it into place.

Final Thoughts:
It was a fun project. I really enjoyed the design process and, in particular, designing the handle. However, the paddle isn't really servisable for play because the PLA is too heavy and makes the paddle really hard to move as well as top heavy. I am pretty scared to use it cause it might break. Also, there was a slight print issue with my paddle surface, which is why the paddle's surface looks wavy.