If only someone had told them..
...horses have four legs.
Oz boffins have used 3D printing to produce a custom-made set of titanium shoes for a Melbourne racehorse - an example of the "endless possibilities" of the technology. A team from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) used a handheld scanner to image the horse's hooves, ran the result …
People expect Titanium being used in "hi tech" sports but not something like horse racing
3D printing has all sorts of obvious uses, depending on the quality of the object you can make.
I suspect it's ultimately going to be the ones we did not foresee (like a horse shoe perfectly matched to each individual hoof) that will be the biggest market.
Thumbs up for doing something old in a whole new way.
and the other half of the farriers job is trimming the hoof itself. Now I appreciate that part of the trimming is to help it fit the shoe, so arguably that part becomes unnecessary, but the other purpose of the trimming is also just general "hoof care" so will still be needed.
<serious comment in reply to delightfully subtle sarcastic one!>
"and the other half of the farriers job is trimming the hoof itself. Now I appreciate that part of the trimming is to help it fit the shoe, so arguably that part becomes unnecessary"
Umm, not really. Horseshoes are tailored specifically to fit a horse: A foot is not trimmed to fit.
What a farrier does is mostly metalworking, combined with a bit of wrangling, and essentially cutting toenails. They're more blacksmiths than chiropodists.
Having 3D laser-printed custom horseshoes is essentially a gimmick: Using a machine to mimic part of a skilled artisan's work isn't really an advance. And as well as hoof care, the shoe still needs to be properly attached by a farrier anyway.
I suspect it's ultimately going to be the ones we did not foresee (like a horse shoe perfectly matched to each individual hoof) that will be the biggest market.
May not have forseen horse shoes ... but R4 prog talking about 3d printing and custom manufacturing (probably "In Business") featured an item a couple of years ago about using 3d printing to produce insoles for running shoes that exactly matched your foot using the same principles as this. Think the person doing this thought that this was probably going to be limited to top athletes etc but he definitely saw the prospect of just printing the heal part of the insole in shops when you bought high end running shoes in the not too distant future
Selective Laser Sintered titanium parts have very respectable mechanical properties, hence their use in aerospace and motorsport applications.
Still, there isn't enough detail in the article to inform me as to why this workflow is better than taking impressions (in clay or whatever suitable material) of the horse's hooves to create a mould.
Except ANY suitable blank for a subtractive process would be subtracting MOST of the metal (given the U shape of the finished product with LOTS of space in between). Not to mention the interior parts of the horseshoe itself where machining can only remove so much material with its given bit set. That's one of the beauties of the additive process. You can build up fine-but-strong structures in ways no subtractive process can duplicate. Not to mention it doesn't waste so much metal (both in the base block and in too wear and tear).
They are not endless they are severely limited to :-
Few off manufacturing where setup and tooling costs and or time make expensive 3D printing economical and attractive.
A very few 'things' with internal structures which simply can't be manufactured with conventional machining, casting or sub-component assembly.
Just by having horse and jockey take a healthy dump prior to the race start.
One of my mates believes in this theory, and places bets on any horse he sees drop a steamer before it goes into the starting gates. Its a surprisingly effective betting scheme that has earned him just as much as any other system in place.
Usually the jockeys don't have much to dump prior to the race, given their dietary regimens to drop weight prior to the race.
As for the horse, that's a delicate balance, as the horse needs the food to produce the necessary energy to run the race, but one doesn't want to wait too long or else the nutrition isn't used properly. It would be interesting to see if waiting until the horse dumps would be too late in this regard.
"Its a surprisingly effective betting scheme that has earned him just as much as any other system in place."
The most effective is of course to be part of the 'in' group who generally knows which horse is going to win before the formality of the race itself starts.
Unless you happen to be mates with a trainer, the horses are generally a mugs game.