Aside from the outcomes of the games themselves — and the whereabouts of Taylor Swift — the most talked-about aspect of the 2024 NFL playoffs may have been Patrick Mahomes’ shattered helmet. On January 13, during the AFC Wild Card Round game between the Dolphins and Chiefs (which the Chiefs ended up winning, 26-7), the outer shell of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ helmet shattered during a head-to-head collision with Dolphins safety DeShon Elliott.
Naturally, attention quickly turned to VICIS, the manufacturer of the helmet, called the ZERO2. It’s easy to assume that the event would’ve been nothing but bad PR for VICIS, with one headline in the online sports publication Sportico reading, “Mahomes’ Cracked Dome Puts Helmet Company Under Scrutiny.” However, for the most part, the take that seemed to prevail was the one from VICIS itself: the broken helmet was “not ideal” but “did its job”.
Aside from that, league officials and the relevant professionals seem to simply want to know how it happened, with no clear answers having emerged just yet. Right after the event, many individuals, including Mahomes himself, assumed it was the cold, with the -4°F temperature making it the fourth-coldest game in NFL history. However, Mike Oliver, executive director of the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE), the leading US certification body for athletic helmets, told the Washington Post, “There have been a lot of games played at zero and below. I’ve not seen any evidence that helmets are more likely to fracture or break at those temperatures.”
In any case, the gist of the event for the additive manufacturing (AM) industry is that AM stood up to a most unusual challenge. In a scenario that Oliver described as “something I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere,” a 3D printed product was the last thing standing between Mahomes’ head and the force of Elliott’s impact. This is the elastomeric lattice component of the DLTA Fit Pods, the ZERO2’s innermost lining, produced by Carbon’s Digital Light Synthesis (DLS) method.
Jim Sauerbaum, the manager of business development for Carbon’s consumer products division, helped me make sense of the unprecedented example of real-time (albeit unintentional) product testing. To begin, Sauerbaum explained how, despite the shattering of the helmet’s outer shell, the inner lining was still able to protect Mahomes:
Given the 3D printed lattice structure’s success in doing precisely what it was designed to accomplish, it wouldn’t be surprising if manufacturers for other sectors learn just as much from the sporting goods market, as producers in the sporting goods market have learned from sectors like automotive. Sauerbaum pointed out some of the AM lessons that can be gleaned from the gains companies like Carbon have demonstrated in manufacturing athletic equipment:
Of course, it also never hurts to create a model for making a splash. This may not have been the way that VICIS would’ve chosen to do so if it had been up to the company, but it’s hard to imagine that the sporting goods supplier isn’t attracting more attention than ever regarding its approach to designing athletic protective wear. If Sauerbaum’s family and friends are any indicator, the public may start to pay closer notice, as well:
And, again, while it is still unclear what caused Mahomes’ helmet to shatter, I think that Carbon is the perfect company to take any lesson that can be learned from the incident and run with it: