1. 1/23/2015 VCU: Make it real
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SCHOOL OF ENGI NEERI NG
Climbing to new heights
Engineering alum’s design draws early praise from industry
It’s probably a good thing Luca Terziotti spent his drive from Virginia to Ferndale, Wash., camping, mountain
biking and rock climbing. Call it research, because when he arrived at the Seattle Manufacturing Corp. for an
internship the summer after his junior year, they told him to go and design a belay device — a piece of equipment
every climber uses to arrest a partner climber’s fall to prevent injury and even loss of life.
The result? The SMC Spire, which not only allows a lead climber to belay a trailing climber from the top of a pitch,
but also allows for an easier release of that climber in the event he or she needs to be lowered after a fall. And
while the device only recently debuted at the 2013 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market exposition, it has already
received some fanfare.
“The reality is that this new device could be a game­changer in the autoblocking world,” writes Jason D. Martin in
his American Alpine Institute climbing blog. “It works significantly better than many of its competitors.”
But Terziotti says that’s the result of a complete outlook toward design, not just looking at what SMC’s
competitors may have gotten wrong. By adhering to the climbing industry’s rigorous standards, remaining
cognizant of the manufacturing ability of the company he was working for and keeping a close eye on production
costs, he was able to marry the theoretical and practical approaches to design and collaboration stressed to him
as a student in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Engineering.
With each concept he designed, he worked with SMC’s machinists to bring a prototype to the table. With each
test and return to the drawing board, the design continued to take on new life and new capabilities, and though the
project began in Washington, SMC allowed him to take his work back to Richmond while he finished his Bachelor
of Science in Mechanical Engineering, which he earned in May 2013. This meant that not only was he able to
“To have something in my hands that I designed … and to
actually use it? It was just such a cool feeling.”

2. 1/23/2015 VCU: Make it real
https://web.archive.org/web/20131118062005/http://makeitreal.vcu.edu/climb.html#.VMJ1DCvF86U 2/2
bring his education out into the real world, he also was able to bring the real world back into his learning
environment.
“They’d send a prototype, and I’d go to Manchester, just across the James River, to test it,” Terziotti says. “I’d
send them some feedback, and we’d approach the design again. It was wild. To have something in my hands that
I designed, that I’d seen so many iterations of — on my computer screen, in plastic, in metal — and to actually
use it? It was just such a cool feeling.”
Last updated 10/30/2013
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