A single-piece bridge with three shot heights and any cue angle built into one object, developed across ten-plus iterations against real player feedback.
Billiards depends on a two-handed bridge — one hand stabilising the cue, the other striking. For players with limited mobility in one hand, the standard game is closed off. Accessible bridges do exist, but they’re either rigid, handling one shot type, or modular in a way that needs swapping parts mid-game.
Hex Path removes the swap. The player picks their shot by repositioning the bridge rather than by changing tools, which means nothing to set up, nothing to carry, and nothing to lose under the table.
TOOLS
SolidWorks
FDM & SLA 3D printing
Laser cutting
Early versions were laser-cut from sheet stock to test layouts, hole sizes and tier heights fast and cheap. Once the geometry worked, it moved to CAD and consolidated into one part.
Hexagonal cutouts let the cue slide smoothly at any angle. Three tiers give different shot types their own height. A weighted steel core drops the centre of mass for stability, a rubber base grips without marring the cloth, and a direction arrow gives new players a visual reference.
Two failure modes drove most of those decisions: bridges too light to hold position under cue impact, and hole geometries that pinched on spin shots. Stability, hole size, thickness and weight all moved in response.
Designing for a constraint pulled everything else into focus. A bridge that works one-handed also turns out to be easier for beginners, faster for casual play and harder to lose. The strongest moves all came from removing — modular to monolithic, many parts to one shape doing three jobs.