3D Printing Your Future Shoes with Filaflex

Read more: http://3dprintingindustry.com/2014/03/11/filaflex-3d-printer-filament-shoes/

Video transcript: Why wait for your Marty McFly shoes of the future? You can 3D print your own futuristic shoes now! They may not have self-tying laces, which will probably be overpriced anyway, but they will be made from real sci-fi technology — 3D printing of course. All you'll need is a bit of flexible filament. Thankfully, Spanish filament producer Recreus has both the designs and the materials to put the spring in your step.

Flexible filaments can be extremely tricky, clogging 3D printer extruders or not sticking to printbeds, so Recreus has spent the past few months perfecting their 1.75 mm filament to be "the most flexible on the market". To demonstrate the success of their work, the company has released the .stl files for the Sneakerbot II sneakers, the perfect 3D printed product to show off some flexible feedstock. Ignacio Garcia, the company's founder and designer of the shoes told 3DPI that when 3D printed with a dual extruder and a combination of PLA and FilaFlex, the shoes offer the perfect balance of support and comfort.

Bathed in the 80's nostalgia of films like Back to the Future II, the Sneakerbot II shoes are actually pretty cool looking. In order to 3D print them, though, you may need a special extruder to ensure that the material can be adequately printed. For that reason, Recreus has also developed its own extruder and hot end. The new extruder body can be 3D printed and is designed so that the limp Filaflex filament doesn't get tangled during the printing process, which will be shown in the following video: