3d Printed Airless Football

Ever found yourself wanting to play catch with a football, but it's flat and you cant find a pump? Look no more because the solution to your problem is the airless football. Created with holes and soft filament, the airless football is designed to allow for air to come through the football when it is thrown. This means you never have to worry about pumping up your football because the airless football needs no maintenance. Furthermore, the airless football is easy to throw and very comfortable to catch unlike the traditional football! Scroll down to learn how to make your own!

CAD Software

TPU Filament

Draw the sketch show above on the front plane. Add the necessary constraints and dimensions. Revolve the profile 90 degrees about the x-axis. Then create a 0.1 inch shell. Mirror the body about the top plane.

Start a sketch on the top plane. Create a rectangle with length 2.5 inches and width 0.3 inch in the first quadrant. Draw a line parallel and equal in length to the length 0.1 inch away from the top line. Draw a circle with diameter 0.2 inch at the left endpoint of this line.

Create a 0.1 inch surface offset of the top half of the football shell. Split the new face of the offset using the rectangular sketch profile. Delete the rest of the offset besides the strip at the top. Thicken the strip -0.1 inch. Add 0.01 inch fillets to all four length edges of the strip. Extrude cut the 0.2 inch circle through the football going upwards. Create another sketch on the top plane and go to project to surface. Project the line from the previous sketch onto the surface of the football.

Start a sketch on the left plane and drawing the sketch above. Extrude the profile 0.08 inch whole length. Pattern the circle extrusion and newly created body with quantity: 4, distance: 2.5 in, orientation: path direction, and the path as the horizontal edge on the strip. For the hole, the type will have to be features and bodies for the new horseshoe-shaped body created.

Fillet the eight edges of the football shell and the ones in between the top and bottom half 0.06 inch. Do not fillet the edge on the left plane.

Split the leftmost horseshoe-shaped body with the left plane as the splitting tool and delete the left part of it. Mirror everything about the right plane. Combine all the split bodies that make up the football shell. Mirror everything about the front plane.

Create an angled plane with the line as the x-axis and the angle as 45 degrees. Create an offset plane of that plane with the distance as 5 inches. Start a sketch on that pane and draw an inscribed hexagon with radius 0.15 inch. Constrain the center to the origin and make the top line horizontal. Rectangularly pattern the hexagon. Set the distribution to spacing, horizontal quantity to 21, vertical quantity to 9, and distance to 0.5 inch and direction to symmetric for both. Extrude the profiles selected above 4.3 inches through the football. Repeat all of these steps for the side across the front plane. Mirror both of these extrusions about the bottom plane.

Create an 5 inch offset plane of the bottom plane away from the football. Start a sketch on that plane. Use the text tool to write a phrase of your choice at the center of the bottom side of the football. I chose "San Francisco 49ers." Remember if you are debossing/embossing onto to different surfaces of the football, you will need two separate text boxes. Deboss the sketch 0.05 inch into the football shell.

Congrats! You have finished designing your football on Fusion!

The football was scaled down 46% in the printing software. I printed in soft filament called TPU. I added supports on the build plate only, ensuring that there are only supports on the outside of the football. I used organic tree supports. The print should take around 24 hours for this size.

Congrats! You have successfully created an airless football!!