This research was undertaken to investigate how and why sports products have evolved; the main reasons for their evolutionary change and the effects of these changes within the world of sport. A central difficulty will be in ensuring that every aspect of this subject is investigated to ensure that the correct areas of influence are discovered. This investigation will enable an understanding of the reasons and influences of product change within the sports industry; the direct influences and indirect issues surrounding the design of sports product development.

Additive Manufacturing is a new manufacturing method which adds material layer-by-layer to produce an object. This report set out to investigate a number of questions relating to Additive Manufacturing and its implications on current design practice, products and users. An introduction to Additive Manufacture as a process and how it has evolved from Rapid Prototyping is given. This report documents the Design for Manufacture constraints which Injection Moulding, a traditional manufacturing method, incurs and gives details of why most do not apply to Additive Manufacturing. The main freedom...