14 DAY TRIAL // High heels might not look it, but they are some of the most sophisticated types of shoes, in need of very precise measurements and crafting, otherwise you'd be hard-pressed to hold your balance any day. This has prevented 3D printing from actually making any, until now.
High heels are really good at stirring things up, as the entire world seems quite ambivalent about them. Many say they aren't healthy, that they cause spine problems, but lots of women wear them anyway.
Whether because they want to be taller than usual or just like the feel of tiptoeing without actually putting any effort into it, many women like high heels.
German shoe design firm Scherf Design is bound to experience good business because of that. It has been experiencing good business if it could afford to invest in a new experiment.
Said experiment consisted of teaming up with Materialise to 3D print a wearable metal high heeled shoe.
The Lightweight Structures module was employed, and the high heel was made using the 3-maticSTL software.
They were able to print a simple, lightweight metal high heel shoe. Curiously, making it fashionable was easier that getting it to actually work at all.
It's because we humans don't tend to have an easy time creating a strong support structure that is also light.
Materialise’s Lightweight Structures Modular, fortunately, can mimic organic, seemingly random lightweight structures (nature does seem to be good at turning up structures like this).
It took five months for Scherf to design the shoe you see in the photos on the left. Metal additive manufacturing company Layerwise actually printed the heels though. As you can see, a honeycomb structure was chosen.
Sadly, only the heel is 3D printed, so it's actually kind of a stretch to call this a 3D printed high-heel shoe. Alas.
