What If Sports Equipment Could Be Built Differently?
Look inside some of today’s most advanced sports equipment and you may see something unexpected.
Not solid foam.
Not one solid piece of metal.
Instead, you might find an intricate network of repeating shapes—small cells, beams, openings, and geometric patterns carefully arranged to create a lightweight structure.
Then comes the surprising part.
A machine may have built the entire structure one microscopic layer at a time.
That is additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing, and it is changing the way engineers think about everything from football helmets to golf clubs and cycling equipment.
For K–8 educators, it also offers an exciting new way to teach engineering.
Students can explore geometry, materials science, digital design, forces, measurement, optimization, testing, and the engineering design process through sports equipment they already recognize. Even better, educators do not need a classroom full of 3D printers to investigate the concepts. Paper, craft materials, graph paper, simple digital-design tools, weights, measurements, and student creativity can model many of the same engineering decisions professionals are making today.
At STEM Sports®, we believe sports create a powerful bridge between academic concepts and the world students experience outside the classroom. The STEM Sports Playbook describes engineering through sports equipment design as one of the many ways students can discover that STEM is already happening inside the games they know.
Additive manufacturing takes that connection one layer deeper.
Download the Playbook for teaching engineering through sports
What Is Additive Manufacturing?
Traditional manufacturing often begins with material that is cut, drilled, shaped, cast, or molded into a finished product.
Additive manufacturing approaches the problem differently.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology defines additive manufacturing as creating a three-dimensional product from a digital design by building it layer by layer. Materials can include plastics, metals, and ceramics. Because material is added only where the digital model specifies, additive manufacturing can produce complex internal geometries that would be difficult—or sometimes impossible—to manufacture using conventional processes.
For students, think about building with very thin layers of LEGO bricks.
Each layer may not look like much by itself. But stack hundreds or thousands of carefully planned layers in exactly the right locations, and a three-dimensional object emerges.
That changes the engineering question from simply “What shape should the outside be?” to something much more interesting:
“What should we build inside it?”
Sports equipment is full of engineering challenges waiting to be explored. Download the free STEM Sports Playbook for sample lessons, hands-on activities, STEM concepts, and career connections.
Football Helmets Show Why Geometry Matters
That question is becoming increasingly visible in football.
On September 9, 2026, ABC7 San Francisco reported on new helmet technologies designed to better manage forces during football impacts. Among the developments are micro-lattice cushioning structures produced through 3D printing. According to Certor Sports, which manufactures Schutt and VICIS helmets, engineers can alter where additional impact-absorbing material is located based partly on the kinds of impacts different positions experience.
Instead of filling the helmet with one uniform block of material, engineers can design a network of structures whose geometry varies from one area to another.
That creates a classroom-ready engineering question:
Can changing a structure’s shape change how it responds to force?
The answer is yes—and students can investigate it without ever putting anything on their heads.
Classroom Investigation: Build a Lattice
Recommended grades: 3–8
STEM focus: geometry, forces, structures, engineering design
Give student groups the same quantity of index cards, paper strips, craft sticks, drinking straws, or another classroom material.
Their challenge is to create a small structure that can support or compress under a controlled tabletop load.
Teams might experiment with repeating:
- Squares
- Triangles
- Hexagons
- Columns
- Folded zigzag patterns
The important constraint is that every team receives approximately the same amount of material.
Before testing, students predict which structure will perform best and explain why. Then place identical lightweight objects or classroom weights on each structure incrementally while students record deformation.
Older students can measure original height and compressed height, calculate percentage change, compare strength-to-mass ratios, or graph load versus deformation.
The goal is not to design protective equipment.
It is to investigate the same fundamental engineering question professionals face: How can geometry influence material behavior?
Why Engineers Love Lattices
A lattice is a repeating network of connected structural elements.
Lattice structures are especially useful in additive manufacturing because engineers can change variables such as cell shape, size, orientation, wall thickness, and density throughout a single part.
That creates opportunities to balance competing design priorities.
An engineer might want a structure that is:
Lightweight but strong.
Flexible in one region but stiffer in another.
Able to compress but return toward its original shape.
Open enough for airflow but still structurally useful.
Those trade-offs are exactly what make an engineering problem valuable for students.
There is rarely one perfect answer.
There are solutions that perform differently depending on what the designer is trying to accomplish.
From Computer Model to Physical Prototype
Additive manufacturing also provides a natural introduction to digital engineering.
Before a part can be printed, someone has to design it.
Engineers typically begin with a three-dimensional computer model. The model is then digitally divided—or “sliced”—into thin layers that tell the manufacturing system where material belongs during each step of the printing process. NIST describes this digital-to-physical workflow as a central feature of additive manufacturing.
That process mirrors an important STEM Sports learning cycle:
Imagine → Design → Test → Measure → Improve
Students do not need sophisticated engineering software to experience that cycle.
Classroom Investigation: Design Before You Build
Recommended grades: 4–8
STEM focus: engineering design, geometry, modeling, constraints
Give students this fictional challenge:
A sports-equipment company wants a lightweight cushioning insert for a piece of equipment. The insert needs to use as little material as possible while still maintaining its shape when compressed.
Students begin on graph paper.
They design a repeating internal structure and label dimensions. They estimate how much material their design would require and identify areas they predict will deform first.
Teams then create a larger physical model using folded paper, cardstock, craft sticks, or straws.
Test it.
Measure it.
Redesign it.
Schools with access to age-appropriate CAD software or supervised 3D printers can extend the activity by creating simple printed prototypes. Schools without those tools can complete the same engineering-thinking process entirely with classroom materials.
That accessibility fits well with STEM Sports’ broader philosophy. The STEM Sports ebook encourages educators to build interactive learning stations and even suggests STEM competition days where students design new sports equipment intended to solve safety-related challenges. It also emphasizes that these experiences can be implemented by educators without specialized STEM backgrounds.
3D Printing Is Changing More Than Football
Football helmets provide a timely example, but additive manufacturing is spreading across sports.
In golf, COBRA expanded its line of 3D-printed irons in 2026. Its clubheads use internal lattice structures that allow engineers to remove mass from some areas and reposition weight elsewhere. One model uses direct metal laser sintering, a process in which metal powder is fused layer by layer. In April, PGA TOUR highlighted how the technology allows COBRA to create internal structures that conventional casting or forging would not easily produce.
Cycling provides another example. PRO introduced its Stealth 3D saddle in January 2026 using hexagonal cells and different-density mesh zones informed by pressure-mapping data and rider feedback.
Different sport.
Different equipment.
Same engineering idea.
Designers are using geometry, materials, testing, and digital manufacturing together to put material exactly where they believe it will provide the most useful performance characteristics.
That is a concept students can model.
Classroom Investigation: Where Should the Material Go?
Recommended grades: 4–8
STEM focus: mass distribution, optimization, measurement, design constraints
Give every team the same fictional sports-equipment outline—a golf-club head, bicycle seat, shoe sole, or protective pad.
Then give them a limited “material budget,” represented by 20 paper squares, tiles, blocks, or stickers.
Students decide where material should be placed.
But first, give each group a design goal.
One team wants to minimize total mass.
Another wants additional support in one location.
Another needs flexibility in the center.
Another needs balanced mass around a designated point.
Students create their designs and explain their decisions.
Then change the requirements.
Perhaps the product is too heavy. Maybe more airflow is needed. Perhaps a specific area needs additional support.
Students revise their designs without receiving additional material.
That is optimization: making the best possible decision while working within constraints.
Simulation Can Happen Before the Prototype
Modern equipment designers do not always need to manufacture an object before asking how it might behave.
Computer simulations allow engineers to test digital designs first.
In February 2026, the NFL released finite-element-model resources designed to support football helmet innovation. Finite element analysis breaks a complex structure into many smaller mathematical elements so engineers can simulate how those pieces might respond under specified conditions. The toolkit includes models of modern helmets, impact-test components, and simulated test conditions.
For middle school students, the mathematics behind professional finite element analysis is far beyond the expected curriculum.
The thinking process is not.
Students can make a model.
Predict what will happen.
Test the physical version.
Compare the prediction with reality.
Then change the model.
Classroom Investigation: Model Before You Make
Give teams two lattice designs printed on paper.
Ask students to predict which one will compress more under the same load and circle the areas where they expect bending or buckling.
Then construct simplified versions and test them.
Were the predictions correct?
Where did the structure behave differently than expected?
What variable would students change in the next design?
This teaches something larger than additive manufacturing:
Models are tools for thinking, not guarantees of what will happen.
You don’t need a 3D printer to get students thinking like engineers. Request a free STEM Sports sample lesson and put hands-on, inquiry-based STEM learning into play.
Printing Something Does Not Mean It Works
3D printing can look futuristic, which makes it easy for students to assume that a printed design is automatically a better design.
Engineers cannot make that assumption.
Materials must be characterized. Parts need measurements. Manufacturing consistency matters. Internal defects can matter. Designs need testing under conditions relevant to the job they are expected to perform. NIST identifies part qualification and measurement as significant challenges in additive manufacturing precisely because complex internal structures can be difficult to inspect and validate.
Sports provide a particularly useful example of why test conditions matter.
The NFL and NFLPA published their 2026 helmet laboratory testing results on April 10, evaluating helmets under conditions intended to represent impacts experienced in professional football. Importantly, the league explicitly cautions that those results should not be extrapolated to collegiate, high school, or youth football.
That distinction can become a valuable science-literacy lesson.
Ask students:
Who was tested?
What conditions were tested?
What was actually measured?
Does the evidence support the claim we want to make?
Would the same result necessarily apply in a different environment?
Those questions matter far beyond sports. They help students learn how to evaluate scientific and engineering claims instead of simply accepting a number because it appears on a chart.
How This Connects to STEM Sports Curriculum
Additive manufacturing fits naturally alongside several existing STEM Sports® curriculum experiences.
STEM Football already introduces students to the evolution of the football helmet, the nervous system, engineering, communication technology, measurement, and equipment performance. A 3D-printing extension can move students from asking how helmets have changed to investigating how geometry and manufacturing methods might influence future designs.
STEM Bike includes helmet technology and explicitly guides students through understanding bicycle helmets using the engineering design process.
STEM Golf includes engineering a pushcart and examining the construction and properties of golf balls, creating an easy bridge to the 3D-printed golf equipment professional players are now using.
STEM Multi-Sport, Ball Edition asks students to review engineering design solutions and technology in baseball while exploring golf and softball through additional science and mathematics activities.
The important connection is not that students need to recreate professional equipment.
It is that the engineering habits are the same.
Define the problem.
Work within constraints.
Create a model.
Test evidence.
Improve the design.
Why Hands-On Engineering Matters
The STEM Sports educator case studies show what can happen when those habits become tangible.
Sandra Hayes, a middle-school STEM teacher at F.K. White Middle School, describes students becoming especially engaged when they can go outside, interact with materials, and actively participate in their learning. Her students became so invested that some complained when the class-ending timer went off, and several carried their interest in STEM into robotics programs.
Lisa Longino has seen similar cross-curricular effects in East Cleveland. She reports improvements in math scores, reading comprehension, attendance, and engagement, with students carrying concepts learned through active sports experiences into science and mathematics discussions.
Additive-manufacturing activities build on that same idea.
Students are not simply reading that lattice geometry matters.
They build a lattice.
They watch it compress.
They measure the change.
They argue about why one design performed differently.
Then they go back and build again.
That is engineering.
From Sports Fans to Future Designers
3D printing also opens another window into the careers behind sports.
The STEM Sports ebook emphasizes that becoming a professional athlete is far from the only way for students who love sports to build a future around them. STEM careers offer countless paths into the industry.
Additive manufacturing can introduce students to careers such as mechanical engineer, materials scientist, additive-manufacturing engineer, industrial designer, CAD designer, biomedical engineer, computational engineer, quality engineer, product-testing specialist, manufacturing technician, and sports-equipment designer.
Sandra Hayes sees that career connection as a critical part of her classroom. She reminds students that athletes depend on people who build stadiums, operate technology, maintain equipment, support health, and fill countless other STEM-connected roles around the game.
3D printing adds another possibility:
Students can become the people who imagine what sports equipment looks like next.
Innovation Happens Layer by Layer
3D printing feels futuristic because the technology is new.
The thinking behind it is not.
Ask a question.
Create a design.
Build a model.
Measure what happens.
Learn from the result.
Change something.
Try again.
Those are the same habits scientists and engineers have always used—and the same habits we want students to develop through meaningful STEM learning.
Sports simply give those habits a context students can see.
A football helmet becomes a geometry problem.
A golf club becomes a lesson in mass distribution.
A bicycle saddle becomes a materials challenge.
A lattice becomes a reason to investigate how shape changes performance.
And a digital model becomes something students can eventually hold in their hands.
With STEM Sports, students do not have to wait for the future of sports engineering to arrive.
They can start designing it now.
Building STEM programming for a classroom, school, district, after-school program, or camp? Connect with STEM Sports to find a turnkey curriculum that matches your students and instructional goals.