SAN DIEGO — 3D print is making its way to the football field to help athletes stay safe, whether it's in games like the Super Bowl or for amateur athletes. A new protective body armor inspired by an animal who’s species can live in depths of close to 2,000 feet.
“So I got inspiration from this cuttlefish bone structure and I saw that as lightweight and strong structures, but the structure is very complex is hard to be manufactured by the traditional manufacturing precise and 3D printing give us a good solution,” San Diego State University Department of Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Yang Yang said.
A cuttlefish’s structure is what the team of San Diego State University and University of Southern California engineers implemented into this innovate protective gear.
“We learn from the cuttlefish, we use 3D printing to mimic their bone structure,” Yang said.
The protective body armor is not intended to replace the gear football players use. Instead, its meant to be an extra layer of protection while also helping researchers in the future with data collected.
“First we provide the protection and now we can collect data during the football games. So we can collect the data and we can know that the impact whereas impacts come from,” Yang said.
3D print is also working to help elderly patients in case they fall. Yang said his team is working on knee pads that would send out an alert for help through a mobile device.
“We can know like about the height of the fall, if it falls from the chair or from the stairs or from even higher of the distance from the level so we can know the data of the falling,” Yang said.
For now, Yang tells CBS 8 that the team is working on ideas on how to commercialize the product in the future.
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