23,000 people watched a 3D printer churn out a replica of the Lombardi Trophy

Robert Pugliese, director of the Health Design Lab at Thomas Jefferson University, thinks a 3D printer that’s not running is a boring one.

“When I get excited about something I like to mess around in CAD,” Pugliese said of the 3D imaging software. “It’s how I relax.”

So when the Philadelphia Eagles came home as Super Bowl LII champions, he thought of making a faithful replica of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, complete with the score of the game etched into the base, using the equipment inside Jefferson’s old bank vault–turned–innovation lab.

To make sure the project reached as many folks as possible, he set up a Periscope broadcast that, by press time, had been watched by 23,000 people. It took the printer 15 hours to churn out the base of the trophy. Up next: the football section, which will be printed in two sections and might take somewhere between 10 to 15 hours.

Pugliese offers a disclaimer: because football players are huge, the trophy itself is bigger than how it looks on TV: It’s about 22 inches tall. The replica had to be downsized a bit to fit the equipment at Jefferson, down to about 15 inches.

3D Printing the Superbowl LII Lombardi Trophy @JeffersonUniv #PhillyPhilly https://t.co/tJS0atYk5I

— Rob Pugliese, PharmD (@RSPugliese) February 8, 2018

Stay tuned to Pugliese’s Twitter account for the next stage of the project.

So what does football have to do with the work being done at Jefferson? Look for a direct link and you’ll miss the point.

“One of the things I do on a regular basis is be an evangelist for design and the importance of design in health care,” said Pugliese, who’s also an clinical pharmacist at Jefferson. “Sometimes that means working on things that have real outcome and sometimes it means getting people excited about technology. If that means 3D printing the Lombardi trophy so people will be interested in asking questions, then I think that’s also important.”

It’s not clear what will happen to the replica yet. It might be housed at the lab or given to fans on Twitter.

“The cool thing about 3D printing is that we can always print another one,” said Pugliese.