Personal Athletic Shoes May Be Created by New Technologies
At some point during the future it may be possible for you to walk into a shop and order specific shoes based on things like weight, running style and other factors. The dawn of personal athletic shoes being available to everyone, may be getting closer given the emergence of and convergence of computer-aided design, digital manufacturing and the technology surrounding materials.
Some companies like the New Balance Athletic Shoe Company in Boston in Massachusetts, have taken advances in product engineering to a new level. They are able to offer shoes with soles that have up to 1300 different features.
Sean Murphy one of the managers of the advance product engineering commented that ” the complexity of new balance is due in part to the large number of sizes for each shoe, thanks in part, to an insight to offer a wide range of sizes”.
It’s unusual to find shoe manufacturers who offer such a large range of different width sizes. In the case of New Balance their men’s shoe sizes range from six to 20 with the width of 2A to 6E. They also hold a number of different styles including everything from running and walking shoes, right through to tennis and basketball trainers.
In the case of athletic shoe prototype testing the way that the product look a good looks and feels is not the key aspect is how it behaves under the stress that it would normally be put under. In the case of new balance they have a smash lab in the basement of a manufacturing plant. Within the lamp and machine smashes into the prototype shoe several hundred times in order to test the performance of the material under that kind of stress.
The way at the Materials that the shoes are made from perform is not the only key factor, individual runners require alterations to the design sometimes preferring cushioning if they are runners that land on their heels. Some even require soles which moved slightly as the foot lands in a similar system to the recently launched fit flop.
