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Student Creates World's Fastest Shoe With a Printer
An anonymous reader writes "Engineer and designer Luc Fusaro from the Royal College of Art in London has developed a prototype running shoe that can be uniquely sculpted to any athlete's foot. It's as light as a feather too, weighing in at 96 grams. The prototype is aptly named, Designed to Win, and is 3D printed out of nylon polyamide powder, which is a very strong and lightweight material. The manufacturing process uses selective laser sintering (SLS), which fuses powdered materials with a CO2 laser to create an object. This process means 3D scans can be taken of the runner's foot so as to ensure the shoe matches the shape perfectly. Fusaro can also change the stiffness of the soles according to the athlete's physical abilities. The shoe can improve performance by 3.5%, meaning a 10 second 100-meter sprinter could see his time drop by 0.35 seconds, which is a huge time saving relatively speaking. Imagine if Usain Bolt put a pair of these running shoes on."
Why would I want a shoe with a printer?
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
...which is why you print the fume hood out first, then start printing nylon shoes.
Are you kidding? a 3.5% improvement would cut hours off of my 100 yard dash times.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon