There are plenty of golf wedges on the market. There aren’t many that make you stop and ask, “How did they make that?”
The Acey 263 does.
We first saw Acey Golf at the PGA Show, and the 3D-printed wedge immediately caught our attention. The back of the club looks unlike anything you would normally expect to find on a wedge, with an intricate lattice structure replacing the traditional solid muscle.
But the more interesting story isn’t simply that Acey Golf is making a 3D-printed wedge.
It is why founder Andy Chick decided to do it in the first place.
Andy has spent most of his career in golf equipment, working on irons and wedges and eventually gaining experience with metal 3D printing and advanced manufacturing. That background gave him a pretty unusual combination of traditional clubmaking knowledge and an understanding of what newer manufacturing technology could actually make possible.
The Acey 263 is where those two worlds have come together.
Who Is Behind Acey Golf?
Andy Chick’s route into golf equipment started at home.
His father was a mechanical engineer at Bose and would spend evenings working on golf equipment in the basement. Andy grew up around it, picking up an understanding of things like swingweight, offset and moment of inertia long before most kids would have had any reason to know what they were.
That eventually led him to study product design and, after college, join Cleveland Golf.
His career in the golf industry included working on irons and wedges, and he later spent time at HP, where metal 3D printing was being explored in collaboration with golf companies including Cobra.
That experience became particularly relevant when Andy began thinking seriously about starting his own golf equipment company.
The trigger was surprisingly simple.
After a serious health scare and while working a stressful job, Andy found himself thinking about getting back into equipment design. During a visit to the TPC course, he came across a Cleveland CG-14 wedge that Tim Clark had used to win The Players Championship in 2010.
Andy had worked on that club.
Seeing it again brought back the desire to design golf equipment.
He started working with challenger brands, building concepts and looking for a way to create something of his own. Then he began thinking about metal 3D printing as a way of doing something that conventional manufacturing simply couldn’t.
When Bryson DeChambeau appeared at the Masters with a set of custom 3D-printed irons, the idea became even more compelling.
If the technology was available, why not use it to rethink a wedge?
That became the starting point for Acey Golf.
Why 3D Print a Golf Wedge?
The Acey 263 isn’t 3D printed simply because 3D printing is interesting.
The manufacturing process is central to the design.
Traditional wedges are generally built around a familiar formula: a blade shape, a long hosel, a relatively wide sole, a thick muscle and a thinner area behind the face.
Andy wanted to challenge some of those assumptions, particularly around where the weight in the club needs to sit.
With additive manufacturing, he could create a much more complex structure and remove material in areas where it wasn’t contributing to performance. That freed him to redistribute mass around the head in ways that would be difficult to achieve through conventional casting or forging.
The result is the lattice structure that dominates the back of the Acey 263.
Importantly, it isn’t a separate piece attached to the wedge. The structure and the rest of the head are designed and 3D printed as one piece.
Acey uses 316L stainless steel for the wedge. Andy chose the material because of its combination of impact strength, elongation and tensile properties. For a wedge, he wanted a material that would provide a solid structure and durable grooves while still delivering the responsive feel golfers expect from a scoring club.
The face is nominally 2.5mm thick, while the lattice extends through the structure rather than simply creating a conventional cavity behind the face.
This is where 3D printing becomes more than a visual gimmick.
The manufacturing process gives Andy significantly more freedom over the relationship between structure, mass and stiffness.
The Goal: More Stability Without Losing a Wedge’s Character
The basic performance objective is fairly straightforward.
Andy wanted to move mass away from areas where it wasn’t particularly useful and redistribute it to improve the overall mass properties of the club.
The lattice structure allows Acey to create a larger, more stable structure without simply filling the back of the wedge with more metal.
That has implications for moment of inertia, center of gravity and how the club behaves when the golfer doesn’t find the middle of the face.
But there was an important limitation.
It still had to look like a wedge.
Andy wasn’t interested in creating a science experiment that golfers would be afraid to put behind a golf ball.
The leading edge, topline and hosel were all carefully developed to retain a familiar appearance at address. The technology is largely hidden until you turn the club over.
That is probably one of the smartest things about the design.
The golfer gets something that looks familiar from the playing position, while the unconventional engineering is doing its work on the other side of the head.
Acey 263 Sole Design and Wedge Grind
The sole is another area where Andy has taken a deliberately different approach.
Modern wedge manufacturers can offer an enormous number of combinations of loft, bounce and grind. For an experienced player who knows exactly what they want, that can be useful.
Andy thinks it can also be overcomplicated.
Rather than creating dozens of different sole configurations, Acey uses a perimeter sole design across the wedge lineup.
There is a primary section of the sole that provides the main ground interaction, while relief is incorporated through the heel, trailing edge and toe.
That gives the player more ability to manipulate the face.
Open the face and the heel relief helps keep the leading edge from rising excessively. Around the green, the player can use the toe and trailing-edge relief to change how the club interacts with the turf. From a bunker, the golfer can use the face angle to effectively increase the amount of bounce being presented.
The idea is to give one sole enough versatility to cover a wide range of shots rather than asking golfers to buy multiple highly specialized grinds.
Andy described himself as something of a contrarian when it comes to wedge sole design. His view is that the complexity of modern grind offerings can sometimes become more about manufacturing capability than what the average golfer actually needs.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for specialized grinds.
It means Acey is trying to solve the problem from another direction.
Hundreds of Prototypes Led to the 263
Perhaps the most surprising part of the Acey story is how much experimentation happened before the final wedge existed.
When we asked Andy how many prototypes he went through, the answer was simple:
Hundreds.
The development process included different blade shapes, sole geometries, lattice configurations, manufacturing methods and even different approaches to how the club could be constructed.
The 263 wasn’t simply the first design Andy printed.
There were multiple concepts taken to the PGA Show, including the 261 and several versions of the 262. Some were cast designs, while others explored two-piece forged construction and different approaches to adding structure and customization to the back of the club.
There were also practical challenges.
Andy left his previous role in February 2025, and shortly afterwards the tariff disruption created another problem for a company that was still trying to establish its manufacturing process. Some of the original design intent had to change simply to find something that could actually be produced.
In the end, that setback turned into a useful part of the development process.
Andy took the different prototypes to the PGA Show and allowed people to get their hands on them.
That is where the 263 started to separate itself.
People could see the unusual structure, but more importantly, they could hit it.
And the reaction told Andy that this was the version worth pursuing.
Why Acey Doesn’t Offer Endless Grind Options
The philosophy behind the 263 extends beyond the sole itself.
One of Andy’s broader ideas is that golf equipment should ultimately be designed around the player rather than simply offering more and more choices.
It is easy to assume that because 3D printing allows you to manufacture almost anything, the logical next step is to let golfers specify every dimension of a club.
Andy doesn’t completely agree.
His argument is that being able to make anything doesn’t mean that every combination is going to be good.
Golf equipment is full of trade-offs. Change one specification and you can affect another. Move the center of gravity and you may influence launch. Change loft and you can alter other performance characteristics. Adjust the sole and you change how the club interacts with the ground.
The real opportunity isn’t unlimited customization for its own sake.
It’s using data to understand which changes actually make sense for an individual golfer.
Could 3D Printing Lead to Truly Personalized Golf Clubs?
This is perhaps the most interesting part of Acey Golf’s long-term vision.
Andy believes modern manufacturing could eventually allow golf clubs to be produced much more like a prescription.
Instead of starting with a fixed product and making small adjustments around it, equipment could potentially be developed around information gathered from the golfer.
That could include launch monitor data, video swing analysis, impact stickers, robotic testing and, most importantly, testing with the golfer on the course.
The idea isn’t to hand a golfer an online configurator and tell them to randomly change every specification.
It’s almost the opposite.
The golfer provides the data, and the designer uses that information to determine what should actually change.
That’s an important distinction.
3D printing gives the manufacturer flexibility, but expertise is still required to use that flexibility properly.
Andy’s background in equipment design is a big part of why that matters.
Building Acey Golf One Wedge at a Time
Acey is also unusual because of just how small the company is.
Andy is effectively building the business himself, including much of the club assembly and finishing. There isn’t a huge organization sitting behind the 263.
That creates some obvious challenges, particularly when you’re producing a premium product in relatively small quantities.
The first release sold out, and Acey is now working through another batch that includes left-handed options and several different finishes, including satin chrome, raw, copper and gunmetal.
The company is also deliberately staying away from large-scale retail for now.
Instead, Acey is looking to build relationships directly with golfers, including through an ambassador program. Andy sees that as a way of getting the equipment into the hands of players while also creating the social proof that is difficult for a small DTC golf brand to generate without traditional retail.
That direct connection fits the rest of the company.
Acey isn’t trying to behave like a major OEM.
It’s trying to build a product, put it in golfers’ hands and learn from what happens.
How Much Does the Acey 263 Cost?
The Acey 263 sits at a premium price point, with the wedge priced at around $300.
That is a lot of money for a single wedge, but the economics behind the product are very different from those of a mass-produced golf club.
Andy explained that the unit cost is significantly higher because the company doesn’t yet have the economies of scale enjoyed by major manufacturers. The 3D printing process itself is expensive, and the small production runs mean those costs are spread across far fewer clubs.
Acey is trying to absorb as much of that additional cost as possible rather than simply passing it all to the customer.
The company also avoids the traditional retail structure, which means it isn’t adding the margins associated with distributors, retailers and sales channels.
That doesn’t make the 263 inexpensive.
It does make the price easier to understand.
You’re buying a small-batch, 3D-printed golf club from the person who designed it rather than a mass-produced wedge manufactured in enormous quantities.
What Comes Next for Acey Golf?
The 263 is still only the beginning.
Acey is already working through its second production batch, with different finishes and left-handed options being added. The company is also developing its ambassador program and looking at ways to build a community around the equipment.
But the bigger question is what happens when Andy has more time, more golfers testing the product and more data to work with.
The potential is much bigger than simply making a wedge with an interesting back.
If additive manufacturing can allow equipment to be designed around the individual golfer, Acey could eventually become a very different type of golf equipment company.
That doesn’t mean everyone will be ordering completely custom 3D-printed wedges from their phone.
In fact, Andy’s own philosophy suggests the opposite. The goal isn’t customization for customization’s sake. It’s using better information and better manufacturing to make more intelligent decisions about what a golfer actually needs.
That’s a much more interesting proposition.
Acey Golf 263: A Different Approach to Golf Equipment
The Acey 263 is easy to dismiss as a weird-looking 3D-printed wedge if you only see a photograph of it.
Spend some time with Andy, though, and it becomes clear that the unusual appearance is almost the least interesting part.
The wedge is the result of decades of golf equipment experience, hundreds of prototypes and a willingness to question some of the assumptions that have been built into wedge design for generations.
The 3D printing is the tool.
The interesting part is what Andy is doing with it.
That combination of traditional clubmaking knowledge, modern manufacturing and a very small-company willingness to experiment is what makes Acey Golf worth watching.
The 263 may be the product that introduced Acey to golfers, but if Andy’s vision for personalization and data-driven equipment development comes together, it could end up being remembered as something much more important.
It might just be the first example of what the company is really trying to build.