ByteDance Valuation Falls 26% to $223.5 Billion in New Employee Share BuybackRead more

A pair of Beats Solo headphones as seen by a Lumafield CT scanner. 
Art by Mike Sullivan.
A pair of Beats Solo headphones as seen by a Lumafield CT scanner. Art by Mike Sullivan.

What’s Inside Those Beats Headphones? A Startup Gives Product Manufacturers X-Ray Vision


A new CT scanning device is saving consumer product companies from supply chain nightmares.

April 22, 2022 12:00 PM PDT

Modern running shoes are marvels of technology.

In the case of Waltham, Mass.-based footwear company Saucony, that means inserting a carbon fiber plate inside the footbed to provide springiness, implanting advanced foams in the midsoles to give back 90% of the energy a runner puts in, and minutely altering the curvature of a shoe’s sole depending on whether it will be used on rocky trails or smooth pavement. “It’s almost like pogo sticks on your feet,” said Saucony director of product engineering Luca Ciccone.

But when it comes time to examine the innards of Saucony’s shoes to see whether manufacturing partners in Asia are implementing all those innovations, the company’s engineers have long resorted to a less illustrious technology: a bandsaw. For years, Ciccone has had to take shoes fresh off the assembly line and literally saw them in half to see what’s going on inside, destroying them in the process.

That has changed with help from Lumafield, a startup just out of stealth mode in Cambridge, Mass., that has built a compact computed tomography scanner for use by engineers who develop consumer products. Ciccone can now press a button to create a colorful 3D X-ray of the shoes and pop open the file in a web browser. “A picture might tell you 1,000 words, but a 3D model will answer a million questions,” Ciccone said.

To test out the scanner ourselves, The Information Weekend grabbed a few products from home, including a Theragun mini massage gun and a pair of Beats Solo headphones, and took them to get scanned at the Lumafield software development hub in San Francisco’s Mission District. In less than a day, the images came back: They showed an intricate cam system driving the Theragun and wireless Beats headphones that are actually full of wires on the inside. To drum up interest before its public debut, Lumafield has been covertly operating a site called Scan of the Month where it probes everyday objects to reveal the engineering within, such as a surprisingly complex Heinz ketchup squeeze bottle.

Access on the go
View stories on our mobile app and tune into our weekly podcast.
Join live video Q&A’s
Deep-dive into topics like startups and autonomous vehicles with our top reporters and other executives.
Enjoy a clutter-free experience
Read without any banner ads.
Former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photos by Getty.
Exclusive
Designer Jony Ive and OpenAI’s Sam Altman Discuss AI Hardware Project
Jony Ive, the renowned designer of the iPhone, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have been discussing building a new AI hardware device, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
From left to right: Blair Effron, Robert Pruzan and David Handler. Photos by Getty; Tidal Partners.
Exclusive Finance
Disputes, Employee Misconduct Rattle Centerview’s Silicon Valley Dreams
The San Francisco Bay Area–based bankers at Centerview Partners, the investment bank that advised Silicon Valley Bank’s owner and Credit Suisse through recent turmoil, got two doses of bad news last week.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Photos via Getty
Exclusive microsoft ai
How Microsoft is Trying to Lessen Its Addiction to OpenAI as AI Costs Soar
Microsoft’s push to put artificial intelligence into its software has hinged almost entirely on OpenAI , the startup Microsoft funded in exchange for the right to use its cutting-edge technology.
From left: Paul Graham, Garry Tan and Michael Seibel. Photos by Getty. Art by Mike Sullivan.
Exclusive startups ai
Y Combinator’s Garry Tan Goes to the Mat
Garry Tan was in his happy place. Surrounded by food trucks and techies basking in San Francisco’s September sun, the CEO of Y Combinator snapped selfies with entrepreneurs as he meandered through a crowd of 2,700 attendees at the startup accelerator’s annual alumni event.
Dave Rogenmoser, cofounder of Jasper. Photo via Getty.
Exclusive startups ai
Jasper, an Early Generative AI Winner, Cuts Internal Valuation as Growth Slows
Jasper AI, an early darling of the generative artificial intelligence boom, has cut the internal value of its common shares 20%, according to former employees who were notified by the company.
The X (formerly Twitter) office in San Francisco on July 29. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.
policy
Musk’s X Cuts Half of Election Integrity Team After Promising to Expand It
Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter , is cutting around half of the global team devoted to limiting disinformation and election fraud on the platform, including the head of the group, according to three people familiar with the situation.