TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION APPLIED TO THE PRODUCTION OF CUSTOMIZED PADEL RACKETS

The current economic system must reintegrate material and energy resources internally and eliminate the concept of waste to replace it with technological innovations based on terms such as recovery, hedgehog and reuse with a view to the circularity of the economy. Through technological innovations it is thus possible to obtain more durable, versatile and innovative products, capable of reducing environmental impact and waste of resources, while providing savings and improvements in the quality of life of consumers. Currently padel rackets, being made up of about 60/70% of expanded polyesters (not recyclable, with methods conventionally opposed to sustainable environmental recycling issues) and 30/40% of composites (also recyclable with non-recyclable costs sustainable) are difficult to recycle except at high costs. 3D printing FDM (acronym for Filament Deposition Molding), or deposit of molten filament, uses thermoplastic materials that can be easily disposed of, recovering over 80% of the manufacturing material, with sustainable technologies. The aim of this paper is to present a new technology based on additive manufacturing (AM) to produce limited edition padel rackets. The current technologies used for the production of racquets are designed only to obtain large volumes which make costs prohibitive for small series of customized products. This is applied to replace the current metal or fiberglass mold with a manual lamination procedure on the spindle itself to obtain the product.