Mizuno makes impossible club possible with virtual engineering

The company says it was able to increase the speed and accuracy of information from designers in the development of its new golf club driver, the Mizuno MP-600 Fast Track, launched in time for Christmas in Japan. The new driver enables players to choose from 15 centre of gravity settings in order to change trajectory, but development of the club had been cancelled because of its complexity, which resulted in production inefficiencies and rising costs. However, Mizuno had its overseas manufacturing sites use Pro/Engineer for communicating and verifying 3D models and, as a result, its designers were able to redesign a club head that could be mass produced without the problems of creating and verifying wooden moulds for each design change. Masao Nagai, director of Golf Product Development Department at Mizuno, says that numerous virtual prototypes were created, with instant simulations, in defining the best performing design, making a variety of adjustments to the shape, depth, track location, and associated centre of gravity changes. “In developing the Mizuno MP-600 Fast Track, Pro/Engineer enabled our designers to instantly determine whether the design was in line with their design concept and intent, without the need for physical prototypes to validate the design. [The software] is now an essential part of our product development process that requires both speed and quality,” he says.