Means again within the misty yonder days of 2021, Bikerumor’s protection of Eurobike 2021 included a blurb about Personomic — a scrappy little startup with goals of bringing personalised 3D-printed grips to the lots.
Quick ahead two years, and the German firm made good on its imaginative and prescient. A profitable Kickstarter marketing campaign led to 1,000 pre-orders from over 30 nations, and now the grips can be found on demand from Personomic’s web site. The key sauce is their materials alternative, mixed with the person match made attainable by Personomic’s proprietary smartphone-scanning expertise.
The design is now getting extra eyeballs — a 94,000-person German survey ranked Persomic on the high of the checklist when it comes to bike grips. On high of that, the corporate simply struck a cope with sizable German biking wholesaler Paul Lange & Co. (a serious Shimano distributor all through Central Europe), which means riders in Germany can now order Personomic merchandise immediately from their native bike store.
That vary might additionally quickly embrace an entire different class of personalized biking touchpoint merchandise — Schulz and his co-founders informed us growth into the saddle market is correct across the nook.
‘Digital Twins’ and Saddles within the Wings
Right here’s how Personomic’s expertise works. Place your hand on a sheet of pc paper and snap a photograph. Ship that picture to Personomic as part of the ordering course of — the place you can too select from 5 grip and locking ring colours, in addition to your most popular texture sample.
The corporate makes use of the paper as a reference level and creates a “digital twin” of your hand — an precise 3D mannequin. Personomic then makes use of this digital twin to print a plastic mildew of your personalised grip, then fills in that mildew with silicon. When the silicon is ready, workers take away the mildew, package deal your grips, and stick them within the mail.
Personomic claims its use of silicon over rubber or plastic ends in grips which are hard-wearing, vibration-dampening, and non-sticky. Pair that with a grip that completely matches your hand, and also you’ve acquired a seemingly profitable combo.
“The entire concept behind utilizing 3D printing is {that a} customized bike grip will match every bicycle owner’s arms completely, which can result in higher distribution of stress throughout the arms. This prevents widespread points similar to numb fingers when biking,” Personomic co-founder Andreas Schulz defined to BikeRumor by e-mail.
Now, it goals to resolve different widespread ache factors for cyclists.
“Though at present we solely promote bike grips, we’re a 3D-printing start-up at coronary heart,” Schulz mentioned. “We’re at present additionally creating a customized bike saddle that’s tailored to the person bicycle owner and wish to develop into the go-to biking model for personalized, ergonomic bike equipment.”
Customization and the potential comforts therein do include a value: a pair of Personomic grips begin at round $97 MSRP, and delivery outdoors the EU prices one other $4.
