"one of the first examples I saw of nylon SLS prints, were a bouncy table tennis sized ball, with a hexagonal lattice design. I wonder whether making a big one needed an advancement in material properties, or maybe dimensionally accuracy. back then the dimensional accuracy was not great, and a basket ball that is not round is no good. Regarding fit for purpose, the main drawbacks, as I see them, are that it cant be deflated, so it will be expensive to transport in bulk, and its ability to take abuse. In a professional environment, this is not a problem, but in a rough one it is. It looks fragile, so the question of how much it can take before it breaks is intriguing. and children will likely try to find out. pneumatic basketballs are virtually indestructible, the only way to break them is to intentionally puncture them. It is an exciting product, but I think it in in the family of carbon fibre. high end, high performance."
"The obvious route to make the inserts would be to cnc them out of aluminium. Their geometry let you do this as one-sided milling from pre-sized blocks.In 48 hours, with a decent cnc machine, you would get a much better surface than the prints can provide. If it is about prototyping, then standard abs will work, if it is about production run of 10000 bottles, the superior surface finish of cnc milled aluminium would be desireable. The 3d printing technology here is cool, but I dont really see a benefit to use it to make these inserts."