Pickleball 'Airless' - Outdoor

A little late to the ‘airless’ craze. But wanted to add the outdoor pickleball to my collection (I made an indoor version a long time ago).

Outdoor is based on the X40, it has 40 holes as opposed to the indoor's 26 holes. I also changed the underlying dual geodesic icosahedron to a 5,5 version which should be more uniform.

But the big change and reason I revisited this is that I got some BIQU PLA-HR, which is like a bouncy TPU, and wanted to compare it to the normal PLA or PETG prints I've done. It's kind of crazy. PLA and PETG bounce way more (way more than a real pickleball) but are not very durable so it is more of a novelty item. But the PLA-HR bounces a little closer to a real pickleball, but also is super durable like TPU so you could actually use it as a pickleball. I think I can get a 10% discount code/link for the filament so DM me if you want it (it might make me some pocket change).

Real versus PLA-HR version

Real Pickleball vs PLA-HR (orange) vs PLA (red)

I was more aggressive with the supports in order to ensure (with the more TPU-like filament) that the ball was more round. However, if you print in PLA it can be hard to remove the supports - but eventually looks pretty good.