Conception de produits SOLIDWORKS - Le protège-grip de golf

Recently a customer of ours requested a SOLIDWORKS Product Design project, to help improve the golf experience. He wants a product that will elevate a golf club from the wet grass in order to keep the grip dry without the need of a towel. Upon further discussion and a little bit of research, we came up with this very early concept model named the “Grip Guard”. This essentially is a manufacturable version which is very plain.

As the weeks go by I’ll be posting more blog posts to update you on the progress of the Grip Guard design which will be 3D printed and field tested on a golf course.

Grip Guard Initial Design

How does the Grip Guard work?

The Grip Guard is designed to be attached to a golf club and bends normal to the golf club acting as a support thus raising the club off the ground. This model as you can see has a clamp like feature that will snap around the golf club by the base of the grip allowing you to move the golf club as you please and it will stay attached when folded as shown in the above picture. Opposite from that is a clip that allows you to attach the Grip Guard to your golf bag, or belt when swinging a club. You can keep it on your club as you swing, but the clip is there for those who prefer not to.

This is a very early prototype model and lets face it, there’s nothing thrilling about the design. In fact, it’s quite boring. Over the next few weeks I’ll be using both SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer software and a Stratasys 3D Printer, to create complicated designs and show exactly how easy it is to make good looking designs with complex geometry. This is also a great time to showcase the intricate parts that 3D printing can create, within a very short period of time!

Perhaps you can provide some ideas for a challenging but cool design that I might be able to tackle, or if you have a suggestion on how to improve the Grip Guard (or even a totally different golfing related issue that can be resolved by 3D Printing) post a comment below.

A quick idea I threw together to get the ball rolling is this model below, which acts similar to the Grip Guard but holds two clubs instead (Note: The same concept can be made for three or more clubs by adding more ridges). The downside to this design is that it does not clamp to the clubs, as it is bulkier and may affect the swing.

Alternative design for two clubs