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R_www.theguardian.com 2015 0000837.txt

#The innovators: the 3d weaving machine putting new heart into soles They are no ordinary navy lace ups. Their chunky, bright orange soles are made of an elaborate flexible grid of interwoven fibres which resembles a crushed honeycomb. The shoes are the first illustration of a new method of weaving in three dimensions created by Nigerian American industrial designer Oluwaseyi Sosanya. Sitting somewhere between the traditional art of weaving and the recent home availability of 3d printers, Sosanya has created a way to weave materials such as wool and cotton in three dimensions before they are sealed to maintain a rigid structure. The method he said, could be applied to protective clothing in sports, for making bulletproof vests and in constructing buildings. Sosanya is in the early states of developing the new weaving method, an idea which came to the 31-year-old when he was studying at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. e have been using the same sort of weaving techniques for thousands of years. This shirt that I am wearing right now is woven in the same way as a shirt that was made 3, 000 years ago, he said. An avid cyclist who wore padding when using BMX bikes, he wanted to create more flexible protection than stiff sportswear which typically involves foam and a rigid plastic protector to cover body parts. hen you put on the sportswear, you are constrained automatically, some more than others. If you want the maximum protection, it seems like you are restricting movement and performance to some degree, he said. It was with this in mind that he found himself in Huddersfield talking to veteran weavers in mills who explained to him in detail the traditional ways of weaving cloths. Lengthwise yarns the warp are interwoven over and under with yarns called the weft. But what was not being done was weaving in three dimensions nor was it being done seemingly by anyone else, according to patent research. Back in London, Sosanya had learned to weave and used his background in mechanical engineering and computer programming to handbuild a machine which guides yarn in set patterns over layers to create the 3d shapes such as those used on the soles of the navy shoes he created. The machine has a tray at the bottom on which rows of aluminium tubes stand. Above those tubes is a mechanised eederwhich winds the fabric for example cotton around them in shapes dictated by a set pattern programmed into a computer. The tubes act as scaffolding for the grid of fabric to be built on top. To make the structure rigid and stick together, the thread is coated in silicone which then solidifies. When the desired shape is completed, the tray at the bottom of the machine is slid out and the mesh which has been created slides off the tubes. Where traditional weaving has the warp and the weft, Sosanya has replaced the warp with the rigid tubes so that the layers can be built up and then held together by a binder, which in the early testing is silicone. As there is one continuous piece of thread which is used through the whole structure, further strength is added. Different fabrics can be used at different stages of the weave and the density and pattern can be altered throughout, he said. Sosanya is now investigating how the new method of weaving could be used practically. Custom-made shoes are one of the first potential uses. ou have all of these opportunities now where you can do customisation around footwear, he said. ith this weaving system you can pre-programme the density. At the ball of your foot, you may want a denser material. Right at the arch of your foot, you might want a softer material. At the heel, you might want a denser material. You can have that in one go. he current method for doing that is using different densities of foam cutting them up, getting a specialist to layer and gluing them on top of each other and making these custom insoles by hand which are really expensive. I could press a button on a machine after an algorithm which runs over the ball of your foot and the underside of your foot which tells me the where the densities and the stresses are and it is done in one Go in sports equipment, the structures could be woven to replace foam and made bespoke which would allow for more movement and cut down on the number of materials used. retty much everyone sports companies has a neoprene on the inside a nice soft stretchy material on the inside then layers of foam and then a woven on top, which is very good for not deforming and then a cup-like a hard shell, like kneepads, he said. fter an athlete is sweating in foam, that foam starts to break down. Not all foam can go 100%back to the memory. What I am working on is structures which can go back to at least 90%of their memory. The first machine, made with Perspex, operates on a 25cm by 25cm area. By scaling up the method, Sosanya believes it could be used in building construction and on a smaller level in bulletproof vests both areas in which he is in discussions with companies. took a technology which is established well and well known, which is weaving, and a technology which is emerging 3d printing. There is an intersection between these two technologies to achieve something which weaving has done never before. When one size does not fit all Sometimes a size 9 is not the same on all feet,, a problem which can now be alleviated by 3d scans which can define the exact shape of each foot. our foot is completely different to my foot, said Sosanya. e walk different, our cadence is different. All of these things are factors which play into the performance of our footwear. Now with 3d printing you can scan your foot and you can scan an insole or even a whole sole or the whole shoe at some point. he designer and the chiropodist can say that you need to remove some material here and you can correct your walking. You have all of these opportunities now where you can do customisation around footwear. i

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