The 3D Printed Trophy for Hockey World League

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There is no joy in sport quite like winning a major trophy on home soil; for football think England 1966, for Rugby think South Africa 1995, for Tennis think Andy Murray at Wimbledon, now another team can add their name to the echelons of home sporting victories; the Argentian Women's Hockey team smacked New Zealand 5-1 in the Rosario final last week, to lift the 2015 Hockey World League trophy.

Little did the team know that the trophy being kissed and passed around the team was made in the UK, by 3DPRINTUK, using the latest 3D printing and finishing technologies. 

"The players loved it (the trophy) and were proud," said Events manager for the International Hockey Federation (FIH), Sandra Harik. "Thanks to 3DPRINTUK for creating these Trophies and putting all the effort to deliver a special and unique product. They are so different to what we had produced before and they were appreciated by all hockey stakeholders."

3DPRINTUK designed both the Men's (won by Australia) and Women's trophies and enlisted the help of several partners to make the finished product. Hockey's governing body FIH, wanted to move away from more traditional trophy making techniques and thus turned to Nick Allen and his team at 3DPRINTUK, for what the London-based service described as one of its coolest projects to date. 

"This trophy tested all of our skill sets from concept design to finishing and allowed us to work with materials and processes outside of 3D printing." said 3DPRINTUK's Jason Pereira. 

The design work was completed by 3DPRINTUK's in house CAD team and the wings were then printed in PA2200 Nylon on a EOS SLS machines. They were then primed and sanded to an smooth finish and spray chromed in a rich gold. The walnut bases were milled by Russell Scientific Instruments and the acrylic and walnut plectrum layers were cut by Chris at Lasercut London.

"This project was full of lessons," explained 3DPRINTUK Managing Director Nick Allen. "Having been offering finishing and CAD in covert mode for the last year, we really wanted to push what we could do so that when we launched the services officially earlier this month we'd have some cracking case studies to show what we can do rather than just launching with no track record. We learnt our limits with what we can achieve and in what time frames we could achieve them in so we can then use this knowledge to give customers a more accurate detail of the costs and time frames needed for a project like this. Most people assume that because you're 3D printing, you can do things in micro lead times, but with a project like this, and also our other recent project where we made the button to turn on the Oxford Street Christmas lights, you need time to get the finishing absolutely top notch!"

The Oxford Street Christmas light turn-on is one of the biggest traditions on the famous British High Street and this year's turn on by Kylie Minogue, was helped, as Nick says, by a bit of 3D printing. 

The team were tasked with recreating a Pandora Charm and balloning it up a size for Miss Minogue to use as the button for the big switch on. The finisihed charm was 3D printed and finished entirely in-house. 

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