By ED TRAVIS
Cobra Golf has jumped the competition again by introducing the first commercially available line of 3D printed irons tagged as the LIMIT3D using nTop software.
Fast Facts Cobra LIMIT3d Irons
Game-improvement category
Compact blade
3D printed 316L stainless steel
Internal tungsten weights-toe, heel, hosel
Stock shaft: KBS Tour $-Taper
500 sets available June 7
Set of 4-iron through pitching wedge $3,000
WYNTK
Cobra Golf first used 3D metal printing back in 2020 and 2021 with putters but now transitioned into the iron market with the LIMIT3D irons to make what looks like a blade design for better players but one that plays like a cavity back which is used by the majority of recreational players.
Until now iron heads have either been cast or forged but making the heads using 3D printing the center of the club though smaller than a typical cast game-improvement club head is disproportionately lighter. The printing of an interior lattice saved a phenomenal 100-grams of metal, 33% of the total clubhead weight, which was relocated into two large tungsten weights near the sole, one at the toe and one at the heel, plus a smaller weight in the hosel.
The result is very low center of gravity and very high moment of inertia and Cobra is saying it performs comparably to a player’s distance or game improvement model like COBRA’s KING TEC or TEC-X irons.
Three-dimensional metal printing is ideal for complex shapes and uses a laser to deposit ultrathin layers of metal in precise locations and patterns. Though slower than either casting or forging it has the ability to manufacture features such as the latticework inside the LIMIT3D heads that cannot be done with other methods.
