[ZORTRAX case study] Tokyo Olympics

Summary

• Celine Goberville, a French olympic pistol shooter using a 3D printed pistol grip, made it to the finals in 10m air pistol at Tokyo Olympics.
• Athletics 3D, a company that design and 3D printed Ceiline’s grip on the Zortrax M300 Dual, already has ideas how to improve its design.
• New iterations of the grip are going to be tested once Celine’s done recovering after the olympics.

Tokyo Olympics: What’s Next for Celine Goberville 3D Printed Pistol Grip

Celine Goberville, a French competitive shooter using a pistol grip 3D printed on Zortrax M300 Dual, qualified for the finals in 10 m air pistol and ended up on 31st place in 25 m shooting at Tokyo Olympics. “She’s happy with the results and confident she did her best”, says Clement Jacquelin, the founder and CEO of Athletics 3D, a company making tailored sports gear that was responsible for the design and manufacturing of Celine’s pistol grip.

Wrapping up the Olympics

According to Jacquelin, Celine and her coaches aimed for winning the medal in Tokyo. But they consider placing in the world’s top 8 in 10 m pistol shooting a very good result nonetheless.

“Everyone wants to win, that’s what professional sports are all about. At this level, though, the differences between the best 8 shooters are so small it usually comes down to disposition each of them have at the day of the event and a little bit of luck. Who is going to make a tiny mistake and who is going to avoid it”, explains Jacquelin, who himself had been a top-level biathlete before he started Athletics 3D.

Jacquelin claims that Celine is currently recovering, doing only light training sessions at the shooting range. Once the recovery stage is done, she is going to focus on the next major event in air pistol shooting which is the World Cup. In the World Cup she is also going to use the 3D printed pistol grip. The grip, however, may undergo some further improvements.

Improving the Grip

“The majority of time we spent developing the current grip, the one which Celine used in Tokyo, we worked with single extrusion Zortrax M200 Plus 3D printers. The upgrade to the M300 Dual combined with Zortrax Apoller we used for smoothing the final grip came relatively late in the project. For this reason, we believe we haven’t yet reached the full potential of this technology”, claims Jacquelin.

Plans for future iterations of the grip include using different materials for different elements of the grip. Jacquelin currently thinks about keeping the Z-ULTRAT for the majority of the grip and using a lighter materials for areas exposed to lower stress levels. This way, the team hopes to reduce the grip’s weight even further.

“Another way we plan to use the M300 Dual’s dual extrusion technology is designing more advanced shapes and internal architectures. This also is going to help us achieve some weight savings. Soluble supports enable you to print models with nearly partially trapped volumes and we plan to use this capability in the future iterations of the grip”, remarks Jacquelin.

Gearing up for Paris 2024

Next summer Olympics is set to take place in Paris in 2024 and Celine is very much hyped for this event.

“Qualifying for Paris and giving the best performance there are going to be the main goals for the next three years for her. As every French athlete, she wants to win the medal in front on her home audience. And I believe that is very much possible”, says Jacquelin.