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WHOOSH

Custom retractable Heely wheels hidden in the heel of a Nike Air Force 1.

PROJECT FEATURES

CAD/CAM/Machining
Product Design
Rapid Prototyping

WHOOSH

Custom retractable Heely wheels hidden in the heel of a Nike Air Force 1.

PROJECT FEATURES

CAD/CAM/Machining
Product Design
Rapid Prototyping
Remember Heelys?
They were a blast to ride and made you the coolest kid in all of 5th grade. But needless to say, we don't really see them around any more. Why? Walking with the wheel installed feels like walking in extra slippery high heels, but to get the wheel out you need to sit down, take out your Heelys Tool, gouge the wheel out, store them somewhere, and install the heel plug that you've probably forgotten. And then do it again for the other shoe. Not exactly the quickest process. So some friends and I started to ask: what if we could capture that same magic of bombing through elementary school hallways but in a sleeker package that wasn't such a hassle?

DESIGN GOALS

01 
FEEL
Capture the feeling and fun of rolling around on Heelys as a kid.
02 
UX
Be able to switch between rolling and walking in less than the 50 seconds it takes in the original.
03 
STYLE
Look good and be indistinguishable from normal shoes when you're walking around.

Sketching & Prototypes

We began filling whiteboards with concept designs and structures. It was immediately obvious that the problem was a deceptively difficult one; small mecahnisms typically don't like the weight of a human standing on them. Needing to "reinvent the wheel," we explored everything from using multiple semicircular wheels to a folding wheel. Eventually we found a solution: multiple 10mm roller bearings arranged around a 40mm circle could effectively "simulate" the feeling of a much bigger wheel at a much smaller volume.

After a whirlwind design and fab sprint, we finally had a finished product...

The Whoosh Force 1's

How Do They Work?

A button hidden beneath the rubber of the heel shifts a springloaded slider, allowing the wheel assembly to switch between the walking (up) and skating (down) states.

50+ CNC Machining Operations

To improve robustness and reliability we reduced the number of parts to the greatest extent possible. Discounting shafts, bearings, and bolts, the final design is composed of only 5 main parts. However, the parts we did have to make were extremely machining intensive; of all the geometry on the parts, there is only one stock face!

Hover over a part to see how it was made.

The mechanism in use...

...and in action.

The team. From left: Mohsin Haider, myself, and Fran Romano.

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