Support structures for golf club heads and methods of manufacturing improved support structures

Abstract

A golf club head, preferably a putter head, comprising at least one structural support member is disclosed herein. The structural support member has a smooth, organic-looking aesthetic, with a continuously changing curvature along its spline and at least one surface, and preferably connects one portion of the golf club head to another portion. Where the support member connects to other portions of the golf club head, the surfaces of the member have a curvature that changes smoothly and continuously, lacking any sharp corners. The support member may be part of a lattice structure formed via binder jetting.

Claims

1. A method comprising the steps of: spreading layers of powdered material across a portion of a binder jet machine; depositing liquid binder on regions of each layer of powder so that the binder bonds adjacent particles of powdered material together; repeating the spreading and depositing steps until a green part is formed; and sintering the green part to create a final part, wherein the final part is a putter head body comprising at least one support member wherein the at least one support member comprises a first end, a second end, a surface, an equivalent diameter D.sub.E, a spline, and a cross-sectional shape, wherein the equivalent diameter D.sub.E of a cross section taken at any point along the spline is calculated using a formula D.sub.E=(4*A/pi){circumflex over ( )}(½), wherein A is an area of a cross-section of the at least one support member, wherein the at least one support member has a length that is greater than D.sub.EA, and wherein D.sub.EA is defined as an average equivalent diameter along a length of an entire support member.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising a step of removing binder via a debinding process, wherein the removing step occurs prior to the sintering step.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the removing step and the sintering step occur in the same furnace.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising a step of preparing design parameters for the golf club component using optimization software, wherein the preparing step occurs before all other steps of the method.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the preparing step comprises inputting into the optimization software at least one parameter, wherein the at least one parameter is selected from the group consisting of individual player measurements, club head delivery data, impact location, and historical player data.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the equivalent diameter is always greater than 0.010 inch and less than 1.000 inch.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the spline is curved and has a length that is at least three times the value of the average equivalent diameter D.sub.EA.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the equivalent diameter changes continuously along an entire length of the spline.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the cross-sectional shape changes continuously along an entire length of the spline.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one support member connects a sole portion of the putter head body to a top portion of the putter head body.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS

(1) FIG. 1 is top perspective view of a first prior art support structure.

(2) FIG. 2 is a top perspective view of a second prior art support structure.

(3) FIG. 3 is a line drawing of a third prior art support structure.

(4) FIG. 4 is a graph showing the curvature of the spline of the embodiment shown in FIG. 3.

(5) FIG. 5 is a graph showing the derivative of curvature vs. position on spline of the embodiment shown in FIG. 3.

(6) FIG. 6 is a top perspective view of a first embodiment of the support member of the present invention.

(7) FIG. 7 is a top perspective view of a second embodiment of the support member of the present invention.

(8) FIG. 8 line drawing of a third embodiment of the support member of the present invention.

(9) FIG. 9 is a line drawing of a fourth embodiment of the support member of the present invention.

(10) FIG. 10 is a graph showing the curvature of the spline of the embodiment shown in FIG. 8.

(11) FIG. 11 is a graph showing the derivative of curvature vs. position on spline of the embodiment shown in FIG. 8.

(12) FIG. 12 is a side perspective view of a putter head with shading representing an enclosed volume.

(13) FIG. 13 is a rear perspective view of the putter head shown in FIG. 12 without the enclosed volume shading and incorporating a plurality of support members of the present invention.

(14) FIG. 14 is a side view of the embodiment shown in FIG. 13.

(15) FIG. 15 is a cross-sectional view of the putter head shown in FIG. 13 along lines 15-15.

(16) FIG. 16 is a process flow chart illustrating a binder jetting process.

(17) FIG. 17 is an image of an exemplary binder jet machine.

(18) FIG. 18 is a top plan view of a uniform lattice pattern.

(19) FIG. 19 is a side perspective view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 18

(20) FIG. 20 is a top plan, 40° filtered from XY plane view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 18.

(21) FIG. 21 is a side perspective view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 20.

(22) FIG. 22 is a top perspective view of a twisted lattice pattern.

(23) FIG. 23 is a side perspective view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 22.

(24) FIG. 24 is a top perspective, 40° filtered from XY plane view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 22.

(25) FIG. 25 is a top plan view of a variable density lattice pattern.

(26) FIG. 26 is a side perspective view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 25.

(27) FIG. 27 is a top plan, 40° filtered from XY plane view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 25.

(28) FIG. 28 is a side perspective view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 27.

(29) FIG. 29 is a top plan view of a non-ordered collection of beams and tetrahedral cell lattice pattern.

(30) FIG. 30 is a side perspective view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 29.

(31) FIG. 31 is a top plan, 40° filtered from XY plane view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 29.

(32) FIG. 32 is a side perspective view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 31.

(33) FIG. 33 is top plan view of a conformal, spherical top lattice pattern.

(34) FIG. 34 is a side perspective view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 33.

(35) FIG. 35 is a top plan, 40° filtered from XY plane view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 33.

(36) FIG. 36 is a side perspective view of the lattice pattern shown in FIG. 35.

(37) FIG. 37 is a top plan view of a unit cell of a lattice.

(38) FIG. 38 is a side perspective view of the unit cell shown in FIG. 37.

(39) FIG. 39 is a sole perspective view of a putter head with a sole puck formed from a lattice.

(40) FIG. 40 is a sole plan view of the putter head shown in FIG. 39.

(41) FIG. 41 is a cross-sectional view of the putter head shown in FIG. 39 taken along lines 41-41.

(42) FIG. 42 is a sole plan view of another embodiment of a putter head with a sole puck formed from a lattice.

(43) FIG. 43 is a sole plan view of another embodiment of a putter head with a sole puck formed from a lattice.

(44) FIG. 44 is a sole perspective view of another embodiment of a putter head with a sole puck formed from a lattice.

(45) FIG. 45 is a drawing of a build plate with beams having different overhang angles.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

(46) The present invention is directed to a golf club head, and particularly a putter head 10, with improved structural support members 20. The putter head 10 comprises a face 16, a sole portion 12 extending from a lower edge 18 of the face 16, and a top or crown portion 14 extending from an upper edge 17 of the face 16. Though the embodiments herein are directed to a putter head, the novel features disclosed herein may be used in connection with other types of golf club heads, such as drivers, fairway woods, irons, and wedges.

(47) In order to attain an optimized design for the support members 20, the relationship between curvature, rate of change of curvature, spline length, cross-sectional area, and cross-sectional shape of each structure must be examined. By controlling each of these geometric features, support members 20 can be created that are much improved over existing prior art support structures within golf club heads.

(48) The support members 20 of the present invention include networks of slender connected elements, and may also be referred to as rods, beams, or ligaments. Each support member 20 is either connected to another support member 20 or to the surface of another type of structure, such as a sole portion 12 or top or crown portion 14 of the putter head 10. In the preferred embodiment shown in FIG. 13-15, the support members connect the sole portion 12 to the crown portion 14, but in an alternative embodiment, the support members may attach only to a single surface, such as the face 16. Some support members 20 also have at least one connection to another support member 20.

(49) At the connection to another support member 20, the surfaces 22 of the support member 20 have a curvature that changes smoothly and continuously. There are no sharp corners and there are no simple fillets with constant surface curvature.

(50) As shown in FIG. 9, for each support member 20, the equivalent diameter D.sub.E is the diameter of a circle 42 with the same area A as the cross section 44 of the support member 20. The cross section 44 is taken in the plane 46 normal to the spline 40 running through the center of the support member 20 along its length. The support member 20 cross section 44 has an area A, and the equivalent diameter D.sub.E is defined as D.sub.E=(4*A/pi){circumflex over ( )}(½).

(51) The length of the spline 40 is no less than three times the equivalent diameter D.sub.E. The equivalent diameter D.sub.E and the cross sectional shape 44 change continuously along the length of each spline 40, but the equivalent diameter D.sub.E is always greater than 0.010″ and always less than 1.000″, more preferably 0.050″-0.500,″ and most preferably 0.050″-0.250″.

(52) As shown in FIGS. 6-9, each spline 40 is curved, and as illustrated in FIGS. 10-11, the curvature continuously changes along the length of the spline 40, with specific ranges of curvature and rates of change of curvature. The entire network of support members 20 occupies a volume 30 that is no greater than 75% of the enveloping volume 50. The enveloping volume 50, which is illustrated in FIG. 12, is the total volume that could be occupied by support members 20 given the application.

(53) When compared with prior art structural members, the support members 20 disclosed herein (1) are less susceptible to stress concentrations during the use of the structural part or component, (2) allow for improved flow and reduced porosity in investment casting operations, (3) allow for improved flow and reduced porosity in plastic injection molding, metal injection molding, compression molding, (4) are less susceptible to local stress concentrations and cracking during sintering of metal injection molding or 3D printed parts, and (5) are less susceptible to local stress concentrations and cracking during the build process for laser-based 3D printing methods, like binder jetting. The support members 20 of the present invention also have a unique “organic” appearance that is not found in prior art structural golf club parts.

(54) Though the support members 20 disclosed herein may, in limited circumstances, be manufactured via investment casting, plastic injection molding, compression molding, forging, forming, and metal injection molding, they are preferably formed via 3D printing, and most preferably via binder jetting. A preferred binder jet process 100 is illustrated in FIGS. 16 and 17, and includes a first step 111 of spreading layers of powder 130 evenly across the build plate 122 of a binder jet machine 120; this step can be performed manually or with a re-coater or roller device 125. This occurs in the build box 121 portion of the binder jet machine 120, where a build plate 122 lowers as each layer of powder 130 is applied. In a second step 112, a printer head 124 deposits liquid binder 135 on the appropriate regions for each layer of powder 130, leaving unbound powder 132 within the build box 121. In a third step 113, the binder bonds adjacent powder particles together. In a fourth step 114, the first and second steps 111, 112 are repeated as many times as desired by the manufacturer to form a green (unfinished) part 140 with an intended geometry.

(55) In an optional fifth step 115, a portion of the binder 135 is removed using a debinding process, which may be via a liquid bath or by heating the green part to melt or vaporize the binder. In a sixth step 116, the green part 140 is sintered in a furnace, where, at the elevated temperature, the metal particles repack, diffuse, and flow into voids, causing a contraction of the overall part. As this sintering step 116 continues, adjacent particles eventually fuse together, forming a final part 240, examples of which are shown in FIGS. 39-44. This process causes 10-25% shrinkage of the part from the green state 140 to its final form 240, and the final part has a void content that is less than 10% throughout. In some embodiments, the debinding and sintering steps 115, 116 may be conducted in the same furnace. In an optional step 117, before the binder jet process 110 begins, optimization software can be used to design a high performance club head or component in CAD. This step allows the manufacturer to use individual player measurements, club head delivery data, and impact location in combination with historical player data and machine learning, artificial intelligence, stochastic analysis, and/or gradient based optimization methods to create a superior club component or head design.

(56) Though binder jetting is a powder-based process for additive manufacturing, it differs in key respects from other directed energy powder based systems like DMLS, DMLM, and EBAM. The binder jet process 110 provides key efficiency and cost saving improvements over DMLM, DMLS, and EBAM that makes it uniquely suitable for use in golf club component manufacturing. For example, binder jetting is more energy efficient because it is not performed at extremely elevated temperatures and is a much less time consuming process, with speeds up to one hundred times faster than DMLS. The secondary debinding step 115 and sintering step 116 are batch processes which help keep overall cycle times low, and green parts 140 can be stacked in a binder jet machine 120 in three dimensions because the powder is generally self-supporting during the build process, obviating the requirement for supports or direct connections to a build plate. Therefore, because there is no need to remove beams, members, or ligaments because of length, aspect ratio, or overhang angle requirements, lattice structures can take any form and have a much wider range of geometries than are possible when provided by prior art printing methods.

(57) The binder jet process 110 also allows for printing with different powdered materials, including metals and non-metals like plastic. It works with standard metal powders common in the metal injection molding (MIM) industry, which has well-established and readily available powder supply chains in place, so the metal powder used in the binder jet process 110 is generally much less expensive than the powders used in the DMLS, DMLM, and EBAM directed energy modalities. The improved design freedom, lower cost and faster throughput of binder jet makes it suitable for individually customized club heads, prototypes, and larger scale mass-produced designs for the general public.

Lattice Structures

(58) The binder jet process 110 described above allows for the creation of lattice structures, including those with beams that would otherwise violate the standard overhang angle limitation set by DMLM, DMLS, and EBAM. It can also be used to create triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) and non-periodic or non-ordered collections of beams.

(59) Compressing or otherwise reducing the size of cells in a section of the lattice increases the effective density and stiffness in those regions. Conversely, expanding the size of the cells is an effective way to intentionally design in a reduction of effective density and stiffness. Effective density is defined as the density of a unit of volume in which a fully dense material may be combined with geometrically designed-in voids, which can be filled with air or another material, and/or with another or other fully dense materials. The unit volume can be defined using a geometrically functional space, such as the lattice cell shown in FIGS. 37-38 or a three dimensional shape fitted to a typical section, and in particular the volume of a sphere with a diameter that is three to five times the equivalent diameter of the nearest beam or collection of beams. The binder jet process allows for the creation of a structure with a uniform final material density of at least 90%, which contrasts with previous uses of DMLM, DMLS, and EBAM to change the actual material density by purposely creating unstructured porosity in parts.

(60) Examples of lattice structures 160 that can be created using the process 10 described above are shown in FIGS. 18-36, and include warped, twisted, distorted, curved, and stretched lattices that can optimize the structure for any given application. Individual lattice cells 170 are shown in FIGS. 37-38, and may be used in addition to or instead of more complex lattice structures 60. FIGS. 20, 21, 24-25, 27, 31, 35 and 36 illustrate what the more complicated structures look like when a 40° overhang limitation is applied: a significant portion of the structure is lost. Another benefit of not having an overhang angle limitation is that manufacturers can create less ordered or non-ordered collections of beams. The lattice structures 160 shown herein may have repeating cells 170 or cells with gradual and/or continuously changing size, aspect ratio, skew, and beam diameter. The change rate between adjacent cells 170 and beams 180 may be 10%, 25%, 50%, and up to 100%, and this change pattern may apply to all or only some of the volume occupied by the lattice structure.

(61) Cell 170 type can change abruptly if different regions of a component need different effective material properties, but size, aspect ratio, skew, beam diameter can then change continuously as distance from the cell type boundary increases. The diameter of the beams 180 may be constant or tapered, and while their cross sections are typically circular, they can also be elliptical. Such structures may take the form of a series of connected tetrahedral cells 170, as shown in FIGS. 29-30. The lack of an overhang constraint allows for the beams 80 to be oriented in any fashion and therefor allows for the generation of a conformal lattice of virtually any size and shape. Modern meshing software also provide quick and simple method by which to fill volumes and vary the lattice density via non-ordered tetrahedral cells. Tetrahedral cells 170 are also very useful for varying cell size and shape throughout a part.

Lattice Applications in Putter Heads

(62) The binder jet process 110 permits manufacturers to take full advantage of generative design and topology optimization results in putter heads 200, as shown in FIGS. 39-44. The lattice structures 160 disclosed herein can be built into their respective golf club heads in one 3D printing step, or may be formed separately from the golf club head and then permanently affixed to the golf club head at a later time. These designs illustrate the kinds of improvements to golf club head center of gravity (CG), moment of inertia (MOI), stress, acoustics (e.g., modal frequencies), ball speed, launch angle, spin rates, forgiveness, and robustness that can be made when manufacturing constraints are removed via the use of optimization software and 3D printing.

(63) A preferred embodiment of the present invention is shown in FIGS. 39-41. The putter head 200 of this embodiment includes a body 210 with a face portion 212 and a face recess 213, a top portion 214, and a sole portion 216 with a sole recess 217, a face insert 220 disposed within the face recess 213, and sole weights 230, 235 and a sole insert or puck 240 affixed within the sole recess 217 so that the weights 230, 235 are disposed on heel and toe sides of the puck 240. The body 210 of the putter, and particularly the top portion 214, is formed of a metal alloy having a first density and has a body CG. The weights 230, 235 are preferably located as far as possible from the body CG and are composed of a metal alloy having a second density greater than the first density. While the hosel 218 of the embodiment shown in FIGS. 39-41 is formed integrally with the body 210, in other embodiments it may be formed separately from a different material and attached in a secondary step during manufacturing.

(64) The puck 240 is printed using the binder jet process described above from at least one material with a third density that is lower than the first and second densities, and comprises one or more lattice structures 260 that fill the volume of the sole recess 217, freeing up discretionary mass to be used in high-density weighting at other locations on the putter head 200, preferably at the heel and toe edges and/or the rear edge 215. The materials from which the puck 240 may be printed include plastic, nylon, polycarbonate, polyetherimide, polyetheretherketone, and polyetherketoneketone. These materials can be reinforced with fibers such as carbon, fiberglass, Kevlar®, boron, and/or ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, which may be continuous or long relative to the size of the part or the putter, or very short.

(65) Other putter head 200 embodiments are shown in FIGS. 42-44. In these embodiments, the weights 230, 235 are threaded and are disposed at the rear edge 215 of the body, on either side and mostly behind the puck 240. In the embodiments shown in FIGS. 42 and 44, the pucks 240 have different lattice patterns 160 than the one shown in FIGS. 39-41, and do not fill the entirety of the sole recess 217. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 43, the puck 240 has another lattice pattern 160 and fills the entirety of the sole recess 217. In any of these embodiments, the puck 240 may be bonded and/or mechanically fixed to the body 210. The materials, locations, and dimensions may be customized to suit particular players.

(66) In each of these embodiments, the weights 230, 235 preferably are made of a higher density material than the body 210, though in other embodiments, they may have an equivalent density or lower density. Moving weight away from the center improves the mass properties of the putter head 200, increasing MOI and locating the CG at a point on the putter head 200 that reduces twist at impact, reduces offline misses, and improves ball speed robustness on mishits.

(67) From the foregoing it is believed that those skilled in the pertinent art will recognize the meritorious advancement of this invention and will readily understand that while the present invention has been described in association with a preferred embodiment thereof, and other embodiments illustrated in the accompanying drawings, numerous changes, modifications and substitutions of equivalents may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of this invention which is intended to be unlimited by the foregoing except as may appear in the following appended claims. Therefore, the embodiments of the invention in which an exclusive property or privilege is claimed are defined in the following appended claims.