Inspiring Sports Technology
Bryan Roberts
Microbubble swimsuit to break records?
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
Sarah Zeim of University of Reutlingen and scientists at the Hohenstein Institute, Bönnigheim/Germany, have developed a innovative swimsuit fabric and construction that features a coating that implements the “microbubble effect”. The microbubble effect creates a layer between the textile and water by trapping air within the yarns and fibres of the suit making it extremely hydrophobic. This low frictional resistance design may help to create the World recording breaking performances seen in the past few years. Interestingly, the “microbubble” effect is used by aquatic animals; another biomimetic sports equipment design.
The other exciting thing about this innovation is that it passes current FINA rules and regulations. Time will tell whether this swimsuit fabric works, or is adopted by the elite athletes and major brands, but good luck Hohenstein!
Specialized McLaren Venge road bike
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
So, if you haven’t already seen it, the coolest aero bike at the minute ridden by Mark Cavendish is the Specialized McLaren Venge road bike. McLaren’s expertise in carbon fibre and aerodynamics has created a beautiful bike optimised for fast riding. Roughly costing $5000 for the frame alone, this bike will appeal to the rich and the talented riders. More information can be found at bikeradar where this image was taken.
Interview with Igor Moinet – custom wetsuit designer for major brands
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
I came across EXUSKIN in my pursuit to find a custom wetsuit company. EXUSKIN do not sell wetsuits as such, but in fact provide the patterns, grading and so on to major brands within the industry. We caught up with Igor earlier this month.
What is your background?
[Igor MOINET (Office)] I’ve been working in the Neoprene industry for the last 10 years, as Neoprene Wetsuit Engineer for Decathlon, and then in charge of developing the European Market for a subsidiary of the Nam Liong Group, one of the 5 top leaders in the Neoprene Industry, but I actually grew up in a textile factory producing Windbreakers in North of France. If you consider I spent my military service in the French Navy Seals, Rain and water have always been a good thing in my business environment… It sounded also logical to spend my leisure time windsurfing, Sailing, Scuba-diving and Surfing with such kind of “damp” background…
How did you get started?
[Igor MOINET (Office)] I’ve always been looking for some accurate tools to work properly and never found them in term of pattern making. I started to be fed up having some customers bringing me one of their competitor’s wetsuit to make “the same with just a few little changes”, admitting their lack of know-how and confessing they were tired of “Trial & Error” development process with their subcontracting factories. So, I finally decided to invest in developing some very specific 3D to 2D designing and flattening software for “Next to Skin” sports garments, in order to raise pattern making level and Product Development lead-time, without discrepancy between initial Design and final Prototype.
What is your business?
[Igor MOINET (Office)] EXUSKIN is a Design & Prototyping Studio specialised in Neoprene wetsuits. We develop any kind of neoprene wetsuits for worldwide leading brands. Our customers sometimes ask us to take the whole project in charge, from Design till Production, using our components and factory network, but most of the time we focus on 3D Design simultaneously calculating 2D patterns for cutting, printing and prototyping in a week’s time. We’re getting organised to have all components, printing and stitching facilities in our new Studio based in Brittany, France, being able to deal with the whole process without losing time and know-how in hazardous sub-contracting. Having our office established in this extraordinary part of Brittany gives us an opportunity for fast feedbacks from users of all kind of water sports, keeping an eye on their quest for the perfect wetsuit for Kayak, surf, windsurf, dinghy sailing, Spear fishing, Scuba Diving, Triathlon, or even for the French Commando based a few miles away from us.
How is it different?
[Igor MOINET (Office)] The main difference is about mixing our “in-house” Design & flattening CAD solutions developed for the last 4 years, with our know-how in term of prototyping and sourcing, allowing us to offer an “all-in-one” service to our customers, no matter how experimented they are in the Neoprene Wetsuit industry. We developed exclusive tracking devices to apply any 3D cutting line design and compression template to any morphology, for a better size grading but also to carry out Bespoke Wetsuit technologies.
What work have you done in the past?
[Igor MOINET (Office)] We’ve done some product development for Australian, American and European water sports companies, mainly to test our CAD solutions and check their accuracy. Once our Software development have reached the accurate quality level, we’ve started investing in our prototyping workshop, creating our component data basis and getting our stitching machines, printing and cutting tools ready.
What do you hope to do with it in the future?
[Igor MOINET (Office)] We know what we don’t want : we don’t aim at launching our own brand, as marketing and sales is not our cup of tea. We’re Product Development oriented and want to stay on this track, even if we sometime sub-contract short productions series for smaller customers or public entities (army for example) who don’t want to manage it. But for sure, in the future, we’ll be on the Custom-made and Made-to-Measure wetsuit niche, as our technology already allow us to deal with it.
How can our readers benefit from your business? I.e. what would you want readers to do when they read this post.
[Igor MOINET (Office)] Sports brands should understand that investing in DHL, FEDEX and UPS is far from a long term solution for a Product Development policy. Trial and Error development process should be banned, investing in technologies and know-how instead of air freight. On the other hand, as long as Sporting goods Industry have the deep feeling to get free Product development from their Chinese factories, it may be hard to let them realize how dangerous it can be to lose total control on their Product Development and how expensive they pay their “free” iterative developments finally included in their negotiated price per unit by their happy manufacturers. Our point is to solve their problems and nightmares in term of Product Development, raising their wetsuit added value with better fit and accurate product design. They should not hesitate to call us for a quote.
Please visit EXUSKIN’s website for more details.
Article by Bryan Roberts
Asics and Mizuno lecture at Loughborough University
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
The Japan-UK sports technology conference held last week was so interesting that it would be a shame not to write an article about the science and technology presented. This article will detail the great work by two great brands who in my opinion are at the top of their game. At the moment, I would even rate them in my top 5 of scientific sports companies dedicated to their particular niche.
Two of the senior product development team from Mizuno and Asics presented to the large crowd of sports technology experts across the UK. Dr Takeshi Naruo (Mizuno) and Dr. Tsuyoshi Nishiwaki (Asics) were very well versed in English, which always puts me to shame, and explained their innovations centres in Japan, their relationships with Universities, their development process and pathways to market. Both gentlemen were extremely interesting and the technological development into every sports product sold was impressive.
Dr Naruo (Mizuno) started. Mizuno have over 2000 employees world-wide working on the development process of Mizuno products which are housed in their own sports technology institute and employees of Mizuno believe in the SOZO principle; SOZO stands for creativity and imagination in Japanese.
Dr Naruo began with an explanation of the development of their trademark shoe design; the Mizuno Wave. Mizuno recognised that there was a conflict of interest in providing a soft mid-sole to provide cushioning and a hard mid-sole for stability. They developed FEA (finitie element analysis) models verfied through lab experiments of various mid-sole designs and developed the Mizuno Wave. The natural shape fo the Mizuno Wave reduces impact forces whilst providing stability. The newest version, called the Infinity Wave, was tested over 170,000 times in a fatique repeated-impact test. A weight, representing a foot-strike, was impacted on the mid-sole to ensure great durability.
Dr Naruo, also spoke about custom-built force sensors on the foot, but moved swiftly onto the development of their golf clubs, apparel and balls. Yes, balls! Mizuno have been selling balls in Japan since 2005. Their unique “cross-eight” golf ball is unique in its core and mantle structure as you can see in the image below. The most interesting part of their golf research was a skin surface strain map during movement. This shows areas of high-strain from which we can increase movement through careful garment design. They term this Bio-Gear and DFCut (Dynamic Function Cut), see image below.
Dr Naruo, wrapped up his presentation with details on the new Mizuno Shaft Optimizer for amateurs golfers like me to understanding shaft speed, flex and consequently ball trajectory.
The lecture swifty moved to the technology developments by Japan’s other major sports brands – Asics. Dr Nishiwaki introduced the Institute of Sports Sciences with its 80+ researchers solely dedicated to the development of shoes and associated products. Asics stand by their motto: “Sound Mind in a Sound Body” showing that their technologies are focussed on the holistic running experience and not solely the feet.
Asics believe there are 8 key components to sports shoe design: cushioning, stability, flexibility, fit, grip, breathability, (light)weight and durability. All of their innovations must satisfy each of the components above and pass stringent standards set by the company.
Asics latest innovation is the “Guidlance line” set along the sole to guide the foot into a natural running position.
In the lecture we were shown many tests to develop this and other technologies including live strain analysis, as shown in the video below and mid-sole material testing to pass durability standards.
Overall, the lecture was very interesting and engaging. The focus of the meet was to develop relationships between UK research bodies and Japanese sports companies/ brands. Hopefully, the good few days that followed formed good and long-lasting relationships.
Article by Bryan Roberts
Slebogganing – the next revolution in winter sports?
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
Is Bill Herrick, the next big name in winter sports? Only time will tell. Bill has invented a new sport called “Slebogganing“! Slebogganing is cross been sledding and tobogganing. Just as snowboarding was a cross between “surfing” and “skiing”, will this new sport create a whole new category of winter sport and hence a new sports industry. We hope so, because Bill is such an innovative and likible guy. SPORTSTECHREVIEW caught up with Bill and would love to tell you his story:
“I grew up in Vermont and skied most of my life. However, age and occupation kept changing and I ended up in Murfreesboro, Tennessee from 1986 till 2006. I retired from Middle Tennessee State University in 2001. It was not until 2006, however, that I met a wonderful lady (I’d been divorced for 26 years) and moved to her place in New Hampshire. It was great to get back in New England. New Hampshire is not Vermont, but close.
Last winter my son and his wife and my grandson visited over Christmas. Wanting to take my grandson tobogganing I borrowed a plastic toboggan from the neighbors and that’s when the fun began. My honey Donna has eleven acres, mostly wooded and quite steep. I had not been on a toboggan for probable 60 years and forgot that one had very little control over them. Since the property has many trees, stonewalls, etc. the tobogganing didn’t work out very well and we were always digging ourselves out of the snow. I promised the kids I cut a path through the woods and make a toboggan run so that next winter (winter 2010-11) when they visited we could have a lot more fun tobogganing.
We had fun, but were unable to go very far down the path I had cut through the woods. It was about 2000 feet long and not very straight. The first snows didn’t until Christmas 2010 and therefore I didn’t know about all the problems we would have trying to go down the path I had cut through the woods. I didn’t give up trying to toboggan the entire 2000 foot length of my toboggan run. I continued to experiment with different types of snow toboggans, saucers, etc., but just couldn’t keep from going out of the run whenever it turned the slightest, particularly, as the snow became more packed and the run got faster. The faster it got the more out of control I got and came close a couple of times of doing some real damage to my body. This worried Donna and whenever the kids called I’d have to tell them that I hadn’t made it to the end of the run but would before the spring.
