Paolo Sabbioni, founder of the company ‘AT Sport sas‘ located in Carate Brianza (MB, Italy), has decided to invest in additive technologies for rapid prototyping of Paralympic and Olympic bows handles branded FiberBow. His choice has fallen upon Sharebot professional 3D printers with FFF technology (Fused Filament Fabrication).
The need
Paolo Sabbioni’s AT Sport, since 2005, produces carbon fiber handles for Olympics bows: a material simultaneously resistant and light; these are characteristics which make FiberBowhandles for Olympic bows handy and very much appreciated by athletes. In fact – using FiberBow products – Oscar De Pellegrin won individual archery gold medal at 2012 London Paralympics; Mauro Nespoli conquered team archery silver medal at 2008 Beijing Olympics; and all the 3 Italian archers (Oscar De Pellegrin, Marco Vitale and Mario Esposito) won team archery bronze medal at 2008 Beijing Paralympics.
“I have always prototyped through traditional methods, creating steel or aluminum handles for Olympic bows”, Paolo Sabbioni’s revealed. But he needed to obtain prototypes more quickly and with optimized costs compared to ‘classic methods’. The advent of Sharebot has proved to be a real turning point in AT Sport’s business: “New technologies made me curious, so I bought a 3D printer, precisely a Sharebot NG, to transform production process“.
The solution
“From the moment I bought Sharebot NG, I realized I could simply achieve my dreams, in particular creating pieces I’d designed in the short term (from morning till night)”, AT Sport founder said.
Paolo Sabbioni, in fact, realizes FiberBow handles (or part of them) for Olympic bows 3D designs firsthand and, creating a simple Gcode, he can directly 3D print the desired piece streamlining and simplifying pre-series prototyping process, that in this way could be completely done on the spot. So AT Sport could also achieve zero risks of disclosure because of prototyping is no longer done by external (and unknown) personnel.
The advantages of relying on Sharebot
The data that becomes immediately clear is time savings: thanks to Sharebot NG, Paolo Sabbioni can obtain a prototype from morning till night. So in only one working day in face a few week necessary to realize the same prototype with metal or wood through traditional technologies. This is positive also because reduces time-to-market, that is the time between product conception and product commercialization.
The second advantage is the costs reduction not only connected to reduction of opportunity cost caused by the shorter manufacturing time, but also to the prototyping and production costs themselves. In fact a single piece AT Sport’s prototyping costs reaches only a few euros.
Thanks to 3D printing FiberBow handles for Olympic bows could be examined (when still in the form of 3D design), 3D printed, verified and finally send them to production till they become true pre-series pieces without risking to waste time and money ordering a mold that, in case 3D design should be recalibrated, will be also wrong and so useless.
“Finally there are two other advantages should be pointed out – Paolo Sabbioni clarified –, that are the possibility to create unthinkable shapes before 3D printing advent (for example the undercut), and in particular the possibility to 3D print not the whole handle, but also only little parts. This makes it possible to further reduce time and costs, and to carry out different pre-series test”.
The continue innovation of Additive Manufacturing allows me to immediately create any idea, also the weirdest, also the one I thought was impossible. So we all have to thank Sharebot for inventing these 3D printers that allow us to realize our dreams