UK: A running shoe is one of the highlights at this year's RCA Gradiation Show in London / Luc Fusaro claims his 'Designed to Win' shoe is the lightest sprint shoe ever designed

Record ID: 231056

  • Title: UK: A running shoe is one of the highlights at this year's RCA Gradiation Show in London / Luc Fusaro claims his 'Designed to Win' shoe is the lightest sprint shoe ever designed
  • Date: 20th June 2012
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (JUNE 18, 2012) (REUTERS) HAL WATTS, INNOVATION, DESIGN AND ENGINEERING STUDENT, WITH HIS ESOURCE BICYCLE PROJECT VARIOUS OF ESOURCE BICYCLE (SOUNDBITE) (English) HAL WATTS, INNOVATION, DESIGN AND ENGINEERING STUDENT, AND DESIGNER OF ESOURCE, SAYING: "They would put the electrical wiring into the shredder here on the bicycle, which produces a mixture of copper and plastic particles. Then they can take this and put it in the sorting machine which is also powered by the bicycle and that will sort the copper from the plastic, leaving you with 98 percent pure copper." PAN ACROSS RCA GRADUATE SHOW TO EMMA MONTAGUE'S DISPLAY ENTITLED 'CHIEF AND HIS WIDOW' VARIOUS OF GLASSES MONTAGUE PUTS ON PAIR OF GLASSES CONTAINING GOLD ANIMAL TEETH VARIOUS OF MONTAGUE WEARING GLASSES
  • Embargoed: 5th July 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: United Kingdom
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Science,Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVA9MK9K491QJ8WON90J1ZKHCGE0
  • Story Text: A London design student has invented a lightweight running shoe which he believes could shave valuable fractions of a second off a 100 metre sprinter's race time.
    With Jamacain sprinter Usain Bolt expected to show his competitors a clean pair of heels in the men's Olympic 100 metres final in London on August 5, the likes of Yohan Blake and Asafa Powell might be interested to check out the progress of a graduation project undertaken by Luc Fusaro, from the Royal College of Art (RCA).
    The bad news for Bolt's chasing pack is that French-born student Fusaro's sprint shoe, 'Designed to Win', is still at the prototype stage and won't be ready for use this summer.
    Fusaro, who is displaying 'Designed to Win' at this week's RCA Graduation Show believes his shoe, says his new show weighs just 96 grams, making is the lightest sprint footwear ever made.
    Constructed from sintered nylon polyamide powder, Fusaro used 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, to produce the shoe which has been tested on a number of amateur London-based athletes.
    During the additive manufacturing process, known as selective laser sintering (SLS), a moving laser beam traced and added sinter powdered polymer into successive cross-sections of three-dimensional parts of the shoe.
    Scientific investigations have highlighted that tuning the mechanical properties of a sprint shoe to the physical abilities of an athlete can improve performance by up to 3.5 percent, when a 0.7 percent improvement can already make a significant difference in the chance of winning a particular race.
    "Tuning the mechanical properties of a sprint shoe to the physical properties of an athlete can improve their performance by up to 3.5 percent and just to show the magnitude of such impact 3.5 percent represents 0.35 seconds at an elite event and in the last Olympic final the eight finalists were all within 0.34 seconds," said Fusaro.
    Happy with the design of the sole, Fusaro plans to make the upper shoe more flexible before it can be declared ready for manufacture, probably by adding a textile lining.
    "My idea was to disrupt the current manufacturing process by using advanced 3D technologies and additive manufacturing to produce custom made shoes. So in my process I had different steps, the first step was to create a range of different sole stiffness that I assessed using finite element analysis and make it tried by the athletes to see which one was the optimum one," explained Fusaro.
    His project has received a James Dyson foundation bursary and Fusaro hopes to join forces with a sports manufacturer to market the shoe. Although Fusaro's design will not make this summer's Olympics, the 23-year-old has already made his mark on the London games. Along with colleagues Heegun Koo, Yan Lu, Hong-Yeul Eom, and Gaetano Ling, he designed the official podium at which medallists will receive their honours.
    Another student hoping for commercial success with her graduation project is Larissa Kunstel-Tabet, who has designed 'My Way', a "wristband which communicates with your mobile phone to guide you home" as he puts it. "It's got three vibration modes, on the left, right, and straight and it will feedback with the satellite navigation which you've preset on your mobile phone and it will guide you home," she added.
    Devised as an accessory for the iPhone, Kunstel-Tabet came up with the idea after getting lost in London and being aware that using traditional map software on her smartphone at night made her a potential target for phone thieves. By using 'My Way', the user's phone stays in their pocket during use and, because it guides the wearer via sensors, is far more discreet.
    American student Kevin Bickham's project is called 'Sunfresh', a rucksack carrier that can be used by small-scale farmers in rural, agricultural sectors to cool perishable goods. According to Bickham, roughly one-third of the edible parts of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally. In developing countries, more than 40 percent of the food losses occur at post-harvest and processing stages of the food supply chain. Bickham transformed recycled textiles, plastics and beeswax into an evaporative cooling material to transport fruits and vegetables that might otherwise be spoiled by the heat. Bickham travelled to South India as part of his project and believes the product will help countless farmers on the subcontinent.
    The Sunfresh rucksack and accompanying storage box consists of small canvas-covered packets of recycled fabric upon which water is poured, causing evaporative cooling - the reduction of temperature resulting from the evaporation of a liquid.
    "You can open this and you would be able to pour water into these individual pockets. The water soaks and it travels the length of the bag and it saturates the bag, and so then when you leave it on in the sun water will evaporate out and it leaves the inner chamber cool," explained Bickham.
    Another student interested in helping workers in the developing world is Hal Watts, who visited the slums of Accra, Ghana and witnessed the dangerous practice of the open burning of electrical wiring from electrical waste to remove the plastic sheath and recover the copper. Seventy per cent of the West's electrical waste is illegally exported to developing nations, where it causes serious health problems and environmental damage. Ghana is one of the main centres where Europe's electrical waste is taken and broken apart. Watts's project, 'Esource' provides an alternative to wire burning by recovering the copper mechanically, creating a sustainable way of recovering the precious metal, as well as a healthier working environment and a higher income for the people working on the dumps.
    'Esource' involves adding inexpensive shredding and sorting machines to the back of a bicycle, making them into portable copper recovery factories for dump workers.
    "They would put the electrical wiring into the shredder here on the bicycle, which produces a mixture of copper and plastic particles. Then they can take this and put it in the sorting machine which is also powered by the bicycle and that will sort the copper from the plastic, leaving you with 98 percent pure copper," explained Watts.
    Among other projects on display at the RCA show at its South Kensington campus is the Polyfloss Factory, a machine inspired by a candyfloss maker that can spin unwanted polypropylene objects into a new, recycled material called Polyfloss. 'Ento' sees students Julene Aguirre Bielschowsky, Jacky Chung, Aran Dasan and Jonathan Frase promoting edible insects as a healthy, tasty and sustainable source of protein.
    Not all the projects have such a practical use. Emma Montague's project 'Chief and his Widow' involves using animals' jawbones and teeth in the design of fashionable sunglasses.
    This summer's RCA annual summer show includes work by the greatest number of graduating students in the College's 175-year history. Show RCA 2012 is taking place simultaneously in six buildings across the College's two campuses in Battersea and Kensington. Nearly 500 art and design postgraduate students from more than 40 countries are exhibiting work.
    With much of the British media focusing on the supposed decline of the nation's once-proud manufacturing base, the students of RCA hope to show that UK-based creativity shouldn't be written off just yet.
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