SFT Climbing

While studying at MIT, I spent most of my free time at the tiny MIT Bouldering Wall. Pulling off my shoes after each long climbing session, I'd wonder why high-performance climbing shoes had to be so uncomfortable.

The lingering feeling that this tradeoff between performance and comfort was unnecessary inspired a journey deep into the intersection of biomechanics and digital manufacturing.

As the sole employee of SFT for much of the last three years, I solved problems ranging from the detailed (determining which pattern and construction details result in key fit parameters) to the large-scale (breaking down the open space of creating a new product into actionable research/design/test plans).

Much of the research, design choices, and testing that resulted in SFT Climbing's custom-fit shoes is documented on the SFT Blog, but an in-depth description of several representative challenges are linked below:

Process Challenge:	Debugging Challenge:	MechE Challenge:

Adhesive Parameters	Heel Design Analysis	Shoes for a Frostbite Amputee