Fruit of the collaboration between the brand belonging to the Atom Group; Olicor, Official Supplier to the Italian Sailing Federation; and a pool of qualified Italian businesses, is the first made-to-measure shoe developed using 3D technology
An extraordinary project that revolutionised the world of athletic footwear is the one made using the technology of Shoemaster®, a brand of the Atom Group specialised in innovative CAD 3D platforms for the design and integrated engineering of shoes. Thanks to Shoemaster® systems, it was in fact possible to create the first made-to-measure shoe developed using 3D technology for Italian sailors who competed in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Fine-tuned together with athletes Ruggero Tita – winner, together with Caterina Banti, of the gold medal in Nacra 17 – Giacomo Ferrari and Giulio Calabrò, the footwear project was undertaken in partnership with OLICOR – which with its U-SAIL brand has been the Official Supplier to the Italian Sailing Federation since 2013 – and developed by an extraordinary pool of qualified Italian companies, Made in Italy excellences who worked together in close collaboration.
Thanks to three-dimensional scanning systems, it was possible to capture and import into Shoemaster® CUSTOM, under the form of 3D data, the morphology of the foot of each individual athlete, to create a made-to-measure last. Accordingly, the 3D model of the standard last was automatically adjusted to create the new personalised last, always using the technology offered by the powerful 3D and 2D Shoemaster® ENGINEER design software. The result was the creation of a high-performance shoe, capable of making the most of the features of the U-SAIL patented sole, while guaranteeing an extremely strong grip with perfect fit, thanks to the total adherence of the model to the morphology of the athlete’s foot. A product of high technical value embellished by the work of Roberto Coda Zabetta, who realised the printed fabric on the shoes worn by the athletes: artist, multi-award winning painter and traveller-explorer, his organic painting interprets the dynamics of colour and the rhythmic strength of shape, while also recalling how creativity remains a fundamental aspect in shoe design, even in a project like this one, which is characterised by a strong technological component. So, we arrive at a new frontier for athletic footwear, which thanks to a strong acceleration in digitalising traditional processes, made possible through CAD 3D technologies, can arrive at an increasingly high level of technical performance. Underlining the validity of the project and the technologies used are these shoes – which will shortly be made available to the general public – as fruit of the work done by a team of Italian names par excellence, which also partially contributed to the results achieved by the Italian Sailing team at Tokyo 2020.
