How Disc Golf Discs Are Made (MVP Manufacturing Tour) - Smarter Every Day 301

We're finally doing it. A lot of people have been reaching out for a long time asking me to do videos about disc golf. So today we're doing a video about disc golf. And this is great because disc golf is right at the center of a lot of things I love. You've got aerodynamics and physics and all that kind of stuff. You've also got just spending time outdoors with your friends doing fun stuff.

And then today, the special thing we're going to talk about is manufacturing, how you actually manufacture a disc golf disc. So obviously the aerodynamics of the disc are important because when you drive from the tee box, you want to throw it as far as possible and as close to the basket as you can. But also the mechanical interaction of the disc with the chains on the basket, that's important, too, because you want the putter to fall down in the basket.

Chad and Brad Richardson from MVP Disc Sports up in Michigan, they reached out and said, "Hey, we love what you do on Smarter Every Day, and we want to sponsor a video or a series of videos on disc golf for Smarter Every Day." So today I'm extremely excited because MVP Disc Sports does this special overmold on their discs. And a lot of people in the disc golf community think that's really cool for multiple reasons we'll talk about later. But that is an interesting process, and we're going to learn about it as a part of the overall Smarter Every Day manufacturing series.

We've learned about metal stamping, roboforming, some really cool processes used to create films, and this video is going to roll into that. We're going to learn a ton of stuff about injection molding, about robotics, about how to design a plant for efficiency. So let's go get Smarter Every Day in Marlette, Michigan, and let's learn how MVP Disc Sports manufactures disc golf discs.

[Intro guitar music riffs]

I flew up to the Detroit airport, which is always exciting. It's SO good. I drove 90 minutes north of the airport. Summers in Michigan are absolutely beautiful. I pulled into a large manufacturing facility. This is the headquarters and factory for MVP Disc Sports. No photos or videos allowed. This is going to be difficult. I was led in by Shelly, and then we passed a putting green that employees used on breaks, and I was led through the headquarters and met Brad and Chad, the two brothers I told you about who started MVP back in 2009.

These are people that had a vision. They started small and they started building things up, and they're using the talent pool from all over the Detroit area that traditionally works with automotive engineering and manufacturing. They're all pulling together, and it's been a huge thing for the local community. New manufacturing jobs in rural America using new technologies. I would love to see this model replicated across all of America.

I was a senior in high school. You were just starting college. Just starting college. It was just more of like a hobby. It was like college during the week. Then we would go home and pack orders, stamp this. Yeah, Brad and I did this, us two, for what? Five years before we got our first employee, four or five? Yeah, four or five years doing everything. Just doing a grind in the barn.

[D] Slinging disc.

[C] They always say it's the biggest sport you've never heard of is the phrase we use. It's out there. There's 12,000 courses worldwide, and we sell a lot of disc.

[D] In disc golf, you throw the disc and it goes into a chain basket. And your thought was, if I could rubberize the outside perimeter, that the chain basket would grab the disc.

[C] We were playing one summer, and it had a traditional disc and I had a large rubber band. I don't know why. I stretched that rubber band around the perimeter just for that grippy edge and putting with the target. The idea would be, oh, maybe that could help catch into the target better with the friction. We figured, well, we can try making that. And so we did. That's what the first run ion is.

[D] The intention wasn't to have a gyroscopic effect. It was to grab-

[C] Increase the friction. That's where the idea started...