If you see someone looking cool in their shades, the chances are they’re wearing a pair of Oakleys – a brand of sunglasses particularly favoured by athletes and sportsmen and women around the world. Now the company is teaming up with HP to help advance the brand’s sports performance design process by using HP’s Jet Fusion 3D printer during the development stage.
Using 3D printing, Oakley is revolutionising how the brand prototypes and creates functional parts by leveraging 3D technology across all of its portfolio of sports accessories, equipment and lifestyle products.
According to Oakley’s Head of Design, Nicolas Garfias, “With HP’s breakthrough 3D printing technology, we will not only accelerate our design-to-production timeline, but we will also reconceptualize the way our products are made, pushing the boundaries of sports performance to new heights.”
As one of the world’s leading sports performance brands, Oakley has a culture of creators, inventors, idealists and scientists – all of whom specialise in using design and innovation to create extraordinary and inspiring products. The company has been at the forefront of performance sports products and technologies for over 40 years, and has been utilising 3D printing since 1992 – making them early adopters of the process. Since 2018, they’ve been using HP 3D technology for rapid prototyping across multi-product lines, including sunglasses, helmets and more.
"Oakley has the highest of design standards, and our innovative 3D printing technology helps them deliver on that experience for millions of athletes around the world," says HP’s 3D Printing Product Manager, Jeff Fawcett. "Together, we are transforming the sports performance community and changing the way the world designs and manufactures consumer products."
Oakley harnesses the power of digital manufacturing using HP's Jet Fusion 580 platform to take a 2D sketch off the page and make a design model a reality. This means the design team can:
For more information on how you could use 3D printing to revolutionise your own business, talk to the Perfect Colours sales team on 0845 680 9000.
Note* - Post updated and corrected August 2022
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