Ideas for monofin footpocket designs...

[noa]

I'm trying to come up with some new footpocket designs for monofins. It has to be something quite stiff to give the best possible, foot to blade, power transfer. At the same time it has to be comfortable enough to wear without causing pain, not too heavy and streamlined. So far my imagination is leaning towards a rigid system along the lines of a rollerblade boot. It would sort of be a rigid shoe with closing clips and a hydrodynamic shape. Still very undefined though. I need all your creative minds to demonstrate that technical genious you posses...
delphicly, Noa

 

[Uli]

As you are already dreaming about the future footpocket, here is my dream:

A perfectly customized footpocket! Something like "shrink-to-fit" or maybe some rapid-prototyping technology like stereolithography. Or you shape the footpockets on your feet with a clay-like material and then bake them in the oven.
Perhaps some of the things they use for prescription shoe-inlays would also work.

Noa is right, we need more ideas! Come on, guys and girls, fuel your imagination!

Uli

 

[JimGlynn]

I think custom is the way to go. A very important factor to take into consideration is pronation of the feet. If the pockets allowed for pronation you could probably produce more power over the spectrum of movememt. I feel like footpocket design needs to have a huge technological leap, much like clipless pedals and shoes did for cycling.
Jim

 

[£íáµ]

next year i ll try to built my own monofin and my concept is to make first a form of my feets ( PVC ) then i will use thiese forms to make a footpockets with carbon glasfibre mix

but its just idea

thiese footpockets looks cool:

but it is race mono
i heard that race monos arent good for freediving , too stiff? hm what about a race mono design with medium stiffness for frediving ?

 

[noa]

Hey Jim, just got back from a trip and read my mails after ten days. yup we think allong the same lines on this. i'm actually wanting to attach cycling shoes to a blade and see how that goes. i think this is the direction it should develop in. will let you know... delphicly, Noa

 

[Jon]

Great idea Noa.

I think that some type of user adjustment sytem would be great.

I think that if the user could adjust the blade angle on the fin, in realtion to the foot pocket, that you could truly customize your fin- like adjusting a bike pedal or a bike seat. You could use different angles for different types of diving- dynamic vs. constant.

I would also like to be able to adjust for the natural pronation of the leg. My feet, and I imagine a few others out there, are not meant to be strapped flat down to a board. If you could adjust the pronation in or out, like on a ski boot, I think that could aid in the comfort/ perfomance area.

Another thing that I would like to see is a monofin with the foot pockets set a little bit apart- like natural standing distance apart. My Specialfin's mono is a little bit better in this regards than my Waterway, which has my feet plastered together. Being able to adjust for a body's size would be huge- just like getting the right pair of handle bars on your road bike to match your shoulder width.

Lot's of ideas to steal from other sports. We stole carbon-fiber technology, what's next???

Jon

 

[noa]

Really good ideas Jon. now who do we get to start building prototypes for us...? delphicly, Noa

 

[derelictp]

Hello!

There is in my opinion a very big potential for improvement and I have done experiments on this but the prices on the fins with technical advanced footpockets is going to be much higher than on todays fins.

Thats's the bad thing. :hmm

My experiments have been going on for over 1 year and will continue until I find the perfect fin or I run out of money...:waterwork

 

[Jon]

Noa,

I was looking at an old pair of biking cleats last night and was thinking about mounting them onto my extra monofin, but I then realized the the blade would bend in the exact opposite direction of where I wanted it do due to the bend in the cycling shoe.

How has your's come out?

Jon

 

[Jyri]

Hi,

We can produce silicon&rubber footpockets what are made personally for you (3D), but it is expencive.
The second problem- we need your foot or 3D photo for this.
Maybe in some years...

Jyri
www.specialfins.com

 

[Mad Max]

I'm very interested in this topic, cause i've just started to make my own monofin blades. A month ago I did a prototype made of fibreglas. This weekend I will produce a monoblade made of carbon-aramid fibres with a fibreglas core.
But I was always thinking of putting some OMER millenium footpockets on it (just like a special fin (sebak)).

Let you know how the blade is like, maybe with a picture.

Why do you want to put a cycling shoe on the fin, don't dee any advantage?

 

[Jon]

Jyri,

There was a compay that we used to use for making custom fot beds for skiboots. They would send you a box with some very soft foam in it. You would have the customer stand in the box and the foam would collapse to amke an exact depression of their foot bed. We could then mail the box back and they would make the orthatic out of that impression. The rest of the work was done by either foam injection of the boot bladder, or by adding individual foam pieces adn cutting ecesses out with an exacto knife.

Maybe you could come up with some type of foot casting system that could be mailed back and forth?

Jon

 

[Jyri]

Hi Jon,

We worked on the idea of custom-made footpockets, but stopped half a year ago as we realised - this will be too expensive and the market potential is too small :-(

There could be a cheaper version ... You'll send us your old boots and we integrate these with fins. And believe me - only half of it is joke...

Jyri
www.specialfins.com

 

[noa]

Originally posted by Jon
Noa,

I was looking at an old pair of biking cleats last night and was thinking about mounting them onto my extra monofin, but I then realized the the blade would bend in the exact opposite direction of where I wanted it do due to the bend in the cycling shoe.

How has your's come out?

Jon

hard to addapt a flat blade due to the need for an angle. you actually need to create an angled "platform" to mount the shoes on. this can be easily done when constructing a new blade but for an existing one i guess you have to modify that area of the fin. i havn't done it yet so hard to say. good luck with it.
delphicly, Noa

 

[noa]

Originally posted by Jyri
Hi,

We can produce silicon&rubber footpockets what are made personally for you (3D), but it is expencive.
The second problem- we need your foot or 3D photo for this.
Maybe in some years...

Jyri
www.specialfins.com

Hi Jyri, so you found where some of my secret research is happening, ha ha, just joking. the custom silicon/rubber idea is great but in my opinion the footpockets should be a rigid extension of the blade. what you describe would be super comfortable but because it still flexes so you will always loose power (especialy when pushing hard on a stiff blade) from the foot to the blade. if rigid (carbon ?) footpockets where custom made to the shape of your foot, with a soft inner sock (maybe silicon) for comfort that would perhaps be an ideal solution. rigid for maximum power transfer and soft (inside the pocket) with custom moulding for comfort. of course this would be a very expensive solutiotion for competition divers and people with a fetish for their monofins... and i think there might be more of them than we think. the future will be interesting. delphicly, Noa

 

[SThompson]

Has anyone thought about mounting the fin on a hinge to the footpocket. When you look at swimming mammals, one of the great advantages they hold (heh one of many, many advantages) is the ability to angle the fin so that the angle of attack is always optimized. Is it possible to mount the fin to a set of metal bars or bracket that would allow it to pivot within a certain range, then mount the metal bracket to the footpocket? This would also allow the swimmers footpocket to be angled independantly to the blade so that people without superflexible ankles could still use them effectively.

Just a thought!

 

[Jon]

I was wondering about htat Scott.

Actually, I was thinking about it in context with a XC-ski boot- which I found when I was looking for my old cycling cleats.

You can kick the ski out, but the spring brings the boot back up to your foot befroe you push off again. I was wondering how this would be on a mono. If you kick hard on the power stroke, and let the blade bend out of the way on the recovery stroke. Of course, water has a lot more friction than air so I am not sure if this would really be fesable or not?

This would be along the same ideas that are used in split fins and force fins.

I still think that if you could mount it on some type of an adjustable pivot point you could really fine tune your blade angle for many types of divers.

Jon

 

[NiallFlinn]

Sorry to resurrect a long-dead thread, but did any of you get anywhere with your radical monofin foot attachment ideas? I only ask because I've been thinking along *very* similar lines, particularly with regard to adapting cycling shoes or similar. I'm pretty new to freediving, but I've been using cycling shoes for over a decade and I'm a little frustrated by the equivalent in freediving. I keep reading all sorts of masochistic comments about how monofin pockets are supposed to be so tight they hurt to aid power transfer, but as far as I can see, the mechanical situation is pretty similar to that of high-performance cycling, and my bike shoes never hurt my feet

So, any progress?

Cheers,

Niall

 

[£íáµ]

Don't believe everything , don't believe anything. Its only rumours, rumours here, rumours there, rumours a little bit of this and a little bit of that, only rumours, no HiTech footpockets!

anyway, a very good hitech footpocktes are possible, that alow very good power transfer and at the same time very comfortable, but in that case, they will be custom , expensive, with mono ~ 500 - 700 eur ...

i already have custom Hitech footpockets, hydrodynamical shape, light weight, comfortable. there is only one problem, they are on a paper as Howto dokument at time, sadly.

In my eyes there at time no need in that kind of footpockets ... because the rest of the gear makes you slower in a water, there should happen a lot of improvements in the rest of our gear ( suit, Mask, weight belt .. ) only then i think it will make sense to have thoose kind of hydrodynamical and light weight fpockets, but at the time ... expensive with no use

i start this year to study aerospace ingeniering, i hope it will help me in my Apnea gear project

 

[monterey jak]

haha, i was thinking about that earlier, mabe you could do something like those water-wingies that go around little kid's arms, and put them at the feet. put your feet in and blow them up untill its how you like it. i think it would probly have to have a strap at the heel to stay on.

haha this idea is sortof farfeched, but mabe it would work... oh wait, air would be a problem.. mabe if you could use a water pump or something.