Hive Ball
Spring 2025
A 3D printed myofascial release therapy ball. Engineered to offer different levels of firmness. Leveraging computational design, the Hive Ball is designed to help users deliver myofascial release therapy to both themselves and others.
Self-Myofascial Release (SMFR) massage can help relieve aches and pains, enhance breathing, and improve your posture.
Sport balls like lacrosse and tennis balls are commonly used for self-myofascial release massages because their smaller form factor and firmness help with targeting specific areas while mimicking a deep tissue massage.
After conducting a white space analysis on common sport balls used for SMFR, I decided to focus on creating a lightweight solution that can perform both therapeutic massages and slight deep tissue without sacrificing weight
Initial ideations, rendered in Vizcom
Lattice ideations created in nTop
For Iteration II, the ball has been slightly enlarged and split into 3, the middle section’s latticing has been rotated.
This iteration managed to address the weak link, but unfortunately a good chunk of pliability was lost.
For this Iteration, the ball is still split into 3 and the middle section’s latticing has been changed to a re-entrant structure, an omnidirectional lattice.
Re-entrant structures have a unique construction that allow them to yield a negative Poisson’s ratio under tension or compression loading.
