Good Design: Wilson Airless Gen1 Basketball
To those who observe, Happy March Madness! To those who don’t, we can still learn good design principles from emerging technologies in this sport.
The sport of basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith with a soccer ball and two peach baskets. The earliest basketballs were made of panels of leather stitched together with laces resembling those on an American football. By the 1930s, the basic shape and design of the basketball that we know today were implemented. With very minimal changes (mostly having to do with their manufacture) for almost 100 years [1], you’d think that we have reached the perfect basketball design. An inflatable rubber bladder surrounded by eight leather panels separated by black rubber channels has become synonymous with the NBA.
Figure 1: An infographic on the history of the basketball, by Smarter Every Day
According to Wilson Sporting Goods, there is room for innovation. Dr. Nadine Lippa, a leading R&D scientist at Wilson, received her first assignment to “reinvent the basketball.” Kevin Krysiak said that the R&D department at Wilson is always looking at new, cutting-edge technologies to improve the way their products are used and sports in general are being played [2]. And so, the journey toward the future was born [3].
3D printing technology, one of the most revolutionary technologies of our day, impressed the Wilson R&D team, so they decided to proceed into that realm of manufacturing. Teaming up with General Lattice and EOS, Wilson developed the 3D structures, files, and material components to produce a realistic replacement for a basketball. The team used selective laser sintering (SLS) to form the ball layer upon layer until the entire sphere takes shape. The Wilson Airless Gen1 Basketball is formed in this way via some form of plastic powder (Wilson has yet to release their chemical formula, but as far as my knowledge goes, it could be some form of TPU).
Figure 2: Photograph of the Wilson Airless Gen1 Basketball
The basketball is made up of two layers of a honeycomb-like structure. According to the YouTube channel Unbox Therapy, which Wilson selected to be one of the first consumers to handle and experience the Gen1, there is a centimeter of depth between the two layers which are connected at each of the vertices of the honeycomb segments. To perpetuate the basketball experience, the design also included the channels that are on a conventional ball. Unbox Therapy also compared the Gen1 with data on an NBA regulation ball and an indoor/outdoor Wilson recreational ball. A regulation ball should weigh 620 grams at the maximum weight. The Gen1 ball weighed around 610 grams, falling slightly under the 620-gram mark. When Unbox Therapy compared the bounce of the Gen1 to the indoor/outdoor ball, they bounced back to the same height. The sound and feel of the basketball were where they differed the most. The indoor/outdoor ball gave that familiar slap-and-boing sound that basketball fans love. The YouTuber described the sound of the airless ball as a whoosh going through it with a smack as it hit the ground. The feel of the raised bumps of the classic leather is the hardest to replicate. In the close-up pictures, the layer lines of the SLS 3D printing are still evident. All that being said, Unbox Therapy was very pleased with the first generation of airless basketball [4].
Figure 3: Unbox Therapy comparing the bounce of a regulation ball to the Gen1
So why would Wilson go out of their way to create this new technology? What are the benefits of re-engineering the basketball in this way? I see a few reasons to do so relating to both basketball rules and DfX principles.
Uniform Pressure and Bounce
With teams located across the United States, there is a slight difference in the environment at each arena. Consider the arenas in Denver, Colorado (elevation of 5280 feet) and New Orleans, Louisiana (elevation of 3 feet). With barely less than a mile of elevation between the two, the effect of gravity on air molecules decreases the atmospheric pressure. Pressure gauges read air pressure relative to the ambient air pressure and therefore with every 1000 feet of elevation, pressure gauges will read 0.5 PSI higher [5]. This translates to a bouncier ball in Denver than in New Orleans, which puts lower-elevation teams at a disadvantage. Basketball purists will say that this is the nature of home-court advantage. However as players become more and more technically advanced, as much as the playing field can be leveled, the more players will be tested by their skills rather than by environmental effects.
Figure 4: Ball Arena, home of the Denver Nuggets.
Less opportunity for tampering
Each ball is inspected before each game, which is done by the officials and NBA representatives, who also inspect and approve the other equipment and the court before the game is played [6]. Despite the stringent rule, people can still interfere with this inspection. Anyone who follows the National Football League will remember “Deflategate” from almost ten years ago. Allegedly, Tom Brady preferred the softer grip of less-inflated footballs and so the team had someone use illegal practices to dupe the inspection process [7]. This allegation is not unique to football (there was some controversy surrounding the New York Knicks – another basketball team – in the 1970s [8]) but is the most recent example of this practice. The consequential benefit of the 3D-printed basketball is that it eliminates the possibility of tampering and creates a further uniform experience across the league.
Ease of Manufacturing
Manufacturing a basketball is quite a process. NBA regulation basketballs use the finest leather available, a rubber bladder wound with nylon thread (to help retain shape), and glue to adhere the components to one another. With so many different processes and materials, the overall manufacturing process produces a lot of waste and has a lot of chance of failed products. With the 3D-printing process, there is a singular machine and a singular material to manufacture a single basketball. This means there is a much lower chance of producing a failed part, practically zero waste, and much less machinery. For reference, according to the company from which the NBA sources its leather, an eighteen-square-foot piece of leather costs $257 [9] and TPU powder costs about $66 a pound [10]. A current basketball takes about three square feet of leather (approximately $45 per ball, and that’s only one of the five components of the total construction) and the new basketball takes 610 grams (1.4 lbs, or $88 per ball, and that's total construction). The construction of the basketball via 3D printing, as a complete process, would save money on the overall manufacturing costs.
Figure 5: The Gen1 being removed from the powder print bed
In the end, the most important factor in the innovation of any sports product is the player. Bob Thurman, Wilson’s vice president of innovation, said “If the player doesn’t like it, then it’s not going to be a product or a prototype [2].” That’s why this basketball is called the Gen1. Wilson is planning on continuing the innovative and creative process until they can unveil an acceptable and superior replacement to the classic leather basketball. From the experience of creating the Gen1, a design engineer should implement four lessons into their design process: push the boundaries of existing technology, enhance uniformity, reduce the opportunity for illegal practices, and improve the manufacturing process. In doing so, the product will emerge as a superior example of ingenuity and innovation.
References
[1] Smarter Every Day on Tumblr: Introducing March Madness Infographics!
[2] The Making of the Wilson Airless Prototype Basketball
[3] Airless Gen1 Basketball | Wilson Sporting Goods
[4] Unboxing the $2500 Wilson Airless Gen1 Basketball
[5] Does Elevation Affect Tire Pressure? – Minder Support
[6] RULE NO. 2: Duties of the Officials
[7] What really happened during Deflategate? Five years later, the NFL's 'scandal' aged poorly - ESPN
[8] The NBA has a history of deflating balls, too - SBNation.com
