Commercially Available Additive Manufactured Golf Irons

Metal additive manufactured clubs aren’t new, but until now they have been limited to protypes. The Cobra LIMIT 3D iron set represents a technology shift in iron construction by creating weight reduction that combines the look and feel of a blade-style club with the MOI of a larger clubface. The feel component is key. Through the AM process, the engineers are able to tune acoustics without internal polymers while also creating a stable head at impact.

Mike Yagley, VP of innovation and AI at Cobra, said the irons’ fully 316L stainless steel body features an innovative internal lattice structure, which allows for 33% of the clubhead weight to be repositioned — without sacrificing strength.

“This unique design, which is only possible using 3D-printing, allows for up to 100 g. of tungsten to be placed in the heel and toe areas of the clubhead, creating a low center of gravity and an exceptionally high moment of inertia relative to the shape and size of the club,” Yagley said. “The result is a compact blade shape with a low center of gravity location, high forgiveness, and distance comparable to that of a player’s distance or game improvement.”

Part of what makes this tech possible is Cobra’s partnership with nTop, a leader in computational design software whose namesake product helps companies build better-performing state-of-the-art designs that leverage the benefits of AM. This has allowed Cobra to streamline its design and prototyping processes to get real clubs to test faster.