Can you 3 D Print your own 2 500 Airless Basketball

we have really fun video today have 3D printed ton of these airless basketballs that have just been the absolute rage across the internet everything from Tik Tok to Instagram to Here on YouTube we are 3D printing these and testing them out in different materials so if you want to print one for yourself you'll know which material you potentially want to try and print it in depending on if you want it to bounce or just sit on the shelf and obviously we want it to bounce now there are official airless basketballs that were released by Wilson that are actually 3D printed with some ridiculously expensive 3D printers and it's going to run you over $2,000 for one of those basketballs and they are engineered to bounce just like basketball to weigh the same weight as an actual basketball these on the other hand we've got little bit of flexibility here pun intended when it comes to some of these and the materials that we're going to be working with whether they're hard or soft if it's pla or TPU or pet we're going to be testing out whole bunch of them and seeing which ones are the best and depending on the material and how big or small you'd like to print these in it could range anywhere from 12 hours to up to 3 plus days for these to print and what's really cool about these is the wide variety of files and designs that are available for you to download in 3D print but they all share the same characteristic of being completely Hollow and lot of them have this hexagon pattern which are very similar to the airless basketball by Wilson and I've ended up 3D printing three different designs in these combinations here so it's sort of intermixed there isn't one that sort of prefer over the other just as of yet but 3DX AV has two amazing file options one that's sort of your traditional basketball and then the other that has little bit of protrusion on the outer edges of the basketball the other designer party lime has created version of the ball that think is most closely matching the Wilson's design where there's an internal lattice type structure on the inside sort of semi- supporting the outer shell and as you probably noticed printed these in two different sizes one as large as could fit on one of the bamboo lab X1 Carbon 3D printers this is coming in at 242 in size and then the smaller is specifically designed for me to be able to replace some of the smaller basketballs that have here in the studio that use with my little basketball hoop set and these are 177 and the big problem with these that came with the basketball set is that they're constantly running out of air and I'm sick and tired of having to pump them up and these are just the perfect replacement before we get started with the testing did want to mention that you'll more than likely need to run few tests to dial in your settings or potentially dry out if you're using flexible material like TPU before printing with it this is like three-year-old zil Tech TPU filament that even ran through the humidifier think for about 12 hours and it just did not print properly at all but it's nice and Squishy but just immediately split in half Beed me SE more and enough of all the yapping let's get to bounc and we're in the front of the studio that has cement floors which would be perfect to test out bouncing these on and first up are these pet prints 3 2 1 yeah thought pet was going to hold up little bit better than that right there and we can test it with smaller petg ball hopefully this one holds up bit better 3 2 1 man okay confirmed pet is not the material that you want to be printing these in not off to great start but have High Hopes here and obviously we need to test this out in pla unfortunately didn't print big one didn't think about that unfortunately missed it but have this rainbow silk PLA and have black rapid pla plus that we're going to test out this is actually pretty therapeutic that just absolutely exploded mean expected it to but that was just impressive next up the black pla plus 3 2 one it didn't shatter but it might as well have it basically just split directly in half I'm just going to toss it again 3 2 1 that's more like it there's just something so satisfying with these exploding I'm going to have just huge mess to clean up though now had bit of crazy idea before recording this video which was what if take one of the pla printed balls and dip it directly in 3D gloop and let that cure and see how well it handles the bounce test here so this is what we're going to be testing out next is the 3D Glo pla this is the pla plus again but it's just covered in gloop all right three two that works so good my gosh was not expecting that to work don't know how well this is going to hold up but I'm honestly super impressed with how this bounced and it didn't crack didn't hear any cracking I'm not seeing any cracks or anything like that and it's bouncing pretty high now obviously the downside to this here the Glo ball is that it's just horrendous looking it's even when tried to use the air cannon thing the air can to blow out some of the gloop and some of the pockets it cures so fast that still wasn't able to get it all and yeah it's it's quite the messy process but the results are pretty dang impressive that's that's super promising to see and I'm excited now to test the others and fingers crossed some of them bounce better than this one and the next one that we're going to test is the Overture super pla plus which is the one that saw blowing up think on Instagram or Tik Tok or something like that and ended up ordering some of this off of Amazon and it prints just like regular pla but it should be lot more durable and hopefully bounce here I'm not quite sure I've not bounced this big one yet so we'll see I'm little little nervous here that is there we go it was doing really good for few bounces and was extremely impressed until it just cracked right there you know what we got to do clearly we're not going to be playing any basketball with this one here I'm wondering if it's just the the size size and weight of it is just too much for it to handle also this is one that has the internal lattice type structure versus just one solid piece so I'm wondering if that contributed to this as well I'm not entirely sure but it it definitely bounced really well until it didn't also any of you creative folks watching any idea what could potentially use some of these broken balls for maybe like an art display or something in here but let me know because don't want to throw them out and I've got smaller one printed that we're obviously going to test out all right here's the smaller super pla plus this one my gosh if it helped if could dribble this one this might be it right here think this is probably the best I'm not sure how long this is going to hold up mean feel like this might break but so far oo that dribbles so well so far this is really great op option as long as you're not maxing it up in size and next up is the ataraxia flexible pla this isn't TPU and it's kind of pla but it's sort of flexible so sort of hodge podge between the two and what's great about it is that you can just use your pla settings on your 3D printer I'm pretty confident these next handful are going to bounce just fine because they're pretty squishy yeah that this one definitely does not bounce as well as some of those other harder filament based prints that we tested like the super pla but it's got decent bounce to it and have feeling this thing is really going to hold up over time to lot of abuse now have to be honest I've already bounced this one whole lot this was the very first attempt at 3D printed bu basketball that attempted with this filament here and ended up bringing it to group of middle school and high school kids that was talking to about 3D printing and social media and this was huge hit they absolutely loved playing with this if you have kids highly recommend it then we also have the smaller version of this think this one actually bounces little bit better than the other and maybe it's just because it's little bit more solid because of the size I'm wondering if printing this at like 50% infill or with more walls might do it better Justice when it comes to bouncing but you can really abuse the heck out of these this one's the first official really soft TPU that I'm going to be testing out here and this is an 885a TPU which means it's pretty soft compared to some of the others that are out there like 995a that we'll be testing in minute but this is from satech that typically makes resin they have guide to printing with this on the bamboo lab X1 3D printers which also might be applicable to other 3D printers that you might be working with which basically has you draping the filament instead of through the PTFE tube over the back of the machine directly into the direct drive extruder see how this bounces this does this doesn't really bounce at all now this might not bounce much at all but it honestly is still one of my favorite balls that printed it just turned out so clean with how it printed with the TPU settings on the bamboo lab p1s and the last one that we're going to be testing out is 995a TPU from duramix it's just some random 3D printing filament company that found off of Amazon think it was like 20 bucks roll so figured let's try it out and see how it goes all right the 95a TPU yeah this this really isn't going to bounce much at all super fun to print with and handle and love how kind of firm but squishy it is but just needs little bit more bounce and let's test the smaller version of it I'm wait keep waiting for it to bounce up high and it's just not bouncing high and unfortunately for the big balls they just mostly broke or they bounced not very well so let me know in the comments if you have any other material suggestions that should test out but the Overture super pla really worked well for this smaller sized ball and I'll definitely be printing some more of these to play around with and test out and maybe I'll try different file variation and see how that goes or maybe if you have comment or suggestion down below of how should further test this let me know and maybe I'll post it up as short but for now have the perfect set of smaller basketballs that aren't going to run out of air anytime soon that are going to work great with my setup honestly can't believe made that basket I'm horrible at this also want to say big special thank you to all my patreon supporters for your continued support be making goofy videos like this one here if you're interested in things like my 3D printer settings you can find those over in my patreon and if you're done with this video make sure you check out the 3D printing nerds video on the airless basketball hey Joel you're up next nice throw thanks and again if you have any tips or suggestions on materials that should be printing with for these or just different setting options please let me know because I'm eager to print more of these hey thanks again for watching you all I'll see you next time bye now air ball