Founded by PGA Professional coach Paul Woodhouse and businessman Peter Smith, FGX Sports aims to take a novel approach to the design of golf clubs, using the latest in manufacturing techniques. A previous endeavour, the ‘Hybrid X’ golf putter, was is designed to have a shallower and more natural putting arc. With the help of the AMRC, FGX Sports is now seeking to apply some of the same design principles to other clubs found in the bag.
“I’ve played golf for 45 years, so I know what makes a good club” said Smith. “What I want to do here is bring together the best of the old style and new style of clubs, to create a design that will revolutionise the golf club industry.
“The project we brought to AMRC North West was all about exploring design options for our new type of high-end club. The team there were great and came up with some nice ideas for us. They also produced a prototype, which is useful for a number of reasons, not least because we now have something to show to potential manufacturers of the product.”
According to the AMRC, it helped FFGX Sports take several steps forward in the evolution of the club design.
“This project was all about accelerating their design cycle and providing support to get a product to market more quickly,” said Dominic Haigh, a project engineer at AMRC North West, part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult. “FGX Sports had a design idea for their new club, which will strike the ball better than other clubs currently on the market, but they weren’t sure about the next steps to take for manufacture.
“We produced some computer aided design (CAD) options for the business and then manufactured a 3D-printed prototype. Golf clubs tend to be forged using an array of different machines, and it’s usually a long and expensive process that doesn’t lend itself to the creation of prototypes, so this was a faster and more efficient way to test the design.”
FGX Sports is now looking at options for the manufacture of the new club design in stainless steel.
