Spring Loaded Technology of Halifax has received almost $250,000 of funding from members of the First Angel Network, and is continuing to raise money on its seed round of funding.

CEO Chris Cowper-Smith confirmed this morning that the company has raised just under $250,000 at the Halifax-based network’s autumn meetings. In October, the company won the $35,000 BioInnovation Challenge, the pitching competition at BioPort Atlantic. These and other fundings are contributing to a round that the company hopes will raise a total of $1.3 million.

Having started at Dalhousie University’s Starting Lean class in September 2012, Spring Loaded is developing a knee brace that strengthens as well as stabilizes the joint. The product can increase the performance of athletes or grant greater mobility to people who have difficulty moving because of age, disability or obesity.

The Levitation knee brace looks like any other knee brace. But when the user crouches, it stores the energy produced by the movement. Then when he or she straightens the knee, the brace releases the power, adding to the strength of the motion.

“The product is coming along quite nicely,” said Cowper-Smith. “We’ve been raising the money to continue the R&D. We now have the ability to customize the brace and not just to fit the user.” He said the customization even extends to fine-tuning the brace to suit the application.

Cowper-Smith and his Co-Founders Bob Garrish and Shea Kewin intend to license the product to a maker of leg braces and hope to have an initial product on the market in late-2014. Its first product will likely be for Alpine sports and work to let people enjoy skiing and snowboarding later in life, improve their performance and/or prevent injury.  It then plans to move into products for other sports.

The third phase of its development would be to help people with mobility issues. These products would likely sell for more than the sports products, and would be more sophisticated devises with greater comfort and controls that could vary the strength of the spring.

FAN funds one company a quarter, drawing from a network of members in the three Maritime Provinces.  Co-Founder Ross Finlay said last week the next company to be funded will be Halifax-based sageCrowd, an online learning network that aims to deepen the relationship between personal improvement authors and their legions of followers.