3D Printing for Sports Recovery
Using 3D Printing to Bring Preventative Treatment to the NFL From Early-Stage Design to Tooling in Eight Weeks
Recoup Fitness has created a simple, yet powerful, tool to aid athletes in recovery from all injuries, from the most critical health issues to normal in-game bumps and bruises. Recoup’s founders, with backgrounds in college athletics, saw a serious lack of accessible methods of personal preventative treatment across the sports landscape.
To address this need, CEO Matt Hyder and his business partner Jeffrey Ballard came up with an early concept for “The Stinger,” a cold massage roller for the upper and lower body. The product is especially useful for rehabilitation and post-workout treatments to aid the body’s recovery from exertion and strenuous physical activity. Designed to ice and reduce inflammation while releasing tension through pressured massage, the Stinger allows athletes from amateur to pro to quickly and easily recover.
Concept Development
Working with Fathom’s Seattle team, Recoup was able to iterate rapidly, tweaking and improving their design incrementally and design for manufacture through Fathom’s manufacturing expertise.
Project Highlights—
- 3D printed parts for early iterations, provided product design consulting services and DFM feedback for optimizing and validating the product
- Used room temperature vulcanization to mold cosmetic show models for marketing purposes
- Produced set of RTV molded parts in customized colors to cater to professional sports teams
- Recoup moved to production with injection molded tools. While Fathom was in the middle of the tool build process, Recoup Fitness discovered a tolerance issue with the mating parts of their product from another supplier. Forced to act quickly and initiate non-steel safe tool modifications, Fathom validated the tool adjustments through 3D printed parts to build confidence with the fitment of their mating parts ahead of the production volume order
- Working against a compressed schedule, the production part order was completed, shipped and Recoup was shipping their product within days of receiving the finished parts
Through Fathom, Recoup went from early-stage design to tooling in eight weeks.
Early Adopters
Early adopters of the Stinger include individual NFL athletes, entire NFL training staffs and international soccer players.
Kenny Anunike, NFL Defensive End for the Super Bowl Champion Denver Broncos, attests to the Stinger’s power: “As a professional football player, my body is constantly taking the highest level of punishment and the demand for quick, effective recovery is essential. These guys have seen a need and created the most effective, low-maintenance recovery tool I have ever used.
Learn more about Recoup Fitness and the Stinger at the Recoup website: recoupfitness.com.
To read more about accelerated product development with Fathom, check out other blog posts documenting our work with womens health startup NextGen Jane, mobile charging company Doblet and phone-based virtual reality company Figment VR.
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