Overview

The vision of the Sport Infinity project is to identify and develop innovative partly waste-based material and composites enabling the automatic production of easily configurable plastic sporting goods.

During the project we will adopt a design-driven approach exploiting the automation potential of highly efficient and sustainable forming processes, enabling product shaping without using glue and/or other adhesives. An innovative, end-to-end collaborative design approach will be adopted.

The new manufacturing method will allow us to build products inspired by the Cradle to Cradle design approach. This design should enable reusing the materials utilized to reduce additional waste.

The main Scientific and Technological objectives of the project are:

• The identification, selection and processing of appropriate materials (virgin or recycled), enabling the achievement of semi-automated and sustainable production.
• The design and development of innovative production processes, enabling local and adhesive-free production of customisable sporting goods.
• Definition and development of an integrated design approach, based on effective knowledge management and including user-involvement in the configuration of custom products.

Sport Infinity gathers expertise across the value chain from design to material development, production, marketing and distribution and across multiple disciplines of industrial design, material science, recycling and industrial processes.

SPORT INFINITY exploitable results will cover a wide range of materials, products, processes, machines, software systems, as well as new methods and models and new knowledge.

The potential impacts include:

• Reduction of the environmental footprint in the production of sporting goods
• The materials developed within this project enable the fast and flexible production of easily customizable sporting goods
• New business opportunities for the EU industry – the innovative material/processing technologies can be transferred to other products and other industries
• Instant reaction to short term consumer needs (qualitative and quantitative)

The project was kicked off in June 2015 and will run over a span of three years.