fizik and Carbon® Announce Partnership to Create Digitally Printed Bike Saddle: Adaptive

September 4, 2019, at Eurobike, fizik is announcing a partnership with Silicon Valley based digital manufacturing company, Carbon, to create their first digitally printed bike saddle, Adaptive. The padding for the Adaptive saddle is Crafted by Carbon™ using revolutionary Carbon Digital Light Synthesis™ (DLS™) technology which uses digital ultraviolet light projection, oxygen permeable optics, and programmable liquid resins to produce parts with excellent mechanical properties, resolution and surface finish.

Carbon DLS technology allows fizik’s designers, sports scientists and engineers to precisely address cyclists’ needs in terms of power transfer, shock absorption, stability and comfort, with none of the constraints or limitations imposed by traditional production methods or materials such as foam. fizik is working to produce a range of saddles that feature padding made of Carbon’s EPU 41 material, with seamlessly engineered zonal cushioning, and superior support and power transfer properties. To produce the new Adaptive saddles, fizik used pressure mapping data collected over nine years from the world’s best professional cyclists.

fizik Adaptive saddle

“We’re proud to partner with fizik to unlock their unique product vision to push the limits of saddle design,” says Erika Berg, Head of Application Development at Carbon. “fizik used the Carbon Lattice Engine to match optimized response profiles based on rider feedback and create a digitally tuned lattice geometry for the Adaptive — enabling differentiation based on their unique product vision and design.”

This new technology creates all sorts of possibilities, as Luca Mathia Bertoncello, fizik Brand Director, explains: “Digital Light Synthesis unlocks a new era in saddle design and manufacturing, driven by athlete data and agile manufacturing processes. It means we can fully release our creativity — transforming not just what we make, but how we make it, bringing a whole new way of thinking to cycling saddles. Our aim is to provide riders with bespoke performance products tailored to their individual biodynamic data.”

Using Carbon DLS technology, any design can be adjusted and customized, which means fizik could eventually collect consumers’ pressure-mapping in stores and use it to create fully personalized saddles. Adaptive is fizik’s first step into personal and athlete-data-driven design and engineering.

The first Adaptive saddles will be based on fizik’s Versus Evo 00 platform – a fully carbon fiber performance racing saddle that delivers power transfer and light weight in a full channel design that offers soft tissue pressure relief.

Adaptive emerged from fizik’s Concepts™ initiative – a cross-disciplinary collaboration of leading industry experts and academics that puts fizik at the forefront of cycling innovation. Concepts™ is fizik’s mark of excellence, reserved for its best, most innovative products. For further information please visit fizik.com/Adaptive or follow #Adaptive and #CraftedbyCarbon on Twitter and Instagram to join the conversation.

Source: Carbon