Racket Rack - Custom Attachment for Tennis Rackets

Tennis has been one of my biggest passions since I was 8 years old. What started as a fun game quickly turned into something much more serious, eventually leading me to play tennis at the college level, after graduating from high school.

At the beginning of this semester, our design class challenged us to come up with a project idea that we would develop by the end of the course. I believe the best ideas come from things we care and are passionate about - so naturally, I turned to tennis for inspiration.

After brainstorming ways to solve a small but annoying problem I often face during practice, I came up with the idea for the "Racket Rack" - a custom attachment for my tennis racket that lets me carry a water bottle and a can of tennis balls without needing to bring a whole bag every time I go to the tennis courts.

To create the racket rack, I used:

1. PLA filament to 3D print the two sides of the structure.
2. VELCRO Brand fasteners, to connect the two parts together, which I sourced from Amazon. Here is the link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DMT1HRZC/ref=ewc_pr_img_3?smid=A20JDF6QRG27UF&th=1

To design the attachment for my racket, I started by sketching the concept on paper. I then recreated the design in Fusion 360, exported it as an STL file, opened it in Cura, and finally printed it.

First I designed the flat center part, 16 centimeters long, with four elongated 1" holes, two at the top and two at the bottom. I then created the cylinder part and attached it to it. To make it stronger I finally added a triangular shape at the bottom to make sure that the structure would hold.

The printing process took 5 hours for each part of the structure, so about 10 hours total. The printing settings that I used on Cura were:

1. infill density = 30%
2. speed = 50 mm/s
3. layer height = 0.2 mm
4. temperature = 200 °C
5. bed temperature = 60 °C

I chose a slower speed to make sure that the quality of the print would be good, that's why it took long to print the structure of the project.

As soon as both the parts were done, I assembled the structure to the grip of the racket using velcro loops.

Once the structure was ready and attached to the racket, I tested it to make sure that it was strong enough to hold the water bottle and tennis balls.

It turned up being very stable, especially thanks to the bottom triangle that I added to the design and the velcro loops. I also tried to walk around holding my racket with the attachment on it and were able to confirm the testing.

My Racket Rack is now ready to be used! I will finally be able to go to the tennis courts just with my racket instead of having to bring a bag with me all the time!