German shoe design firm Scherf Design has teamed up with Materialise to 3D print a wearable metal high-heeled shoe using 3-maticSTL software and its Lightweight Structures module.
The goal was a seemingly simple one — to print a lightweight, metal high heel shoe that was both wearable and fashionable.
Scherf Design has been making striking footwear for almost 20 years, but in order to make the metal heel lightweight enough to be functional they turned to Materialise.
Over a period of five months, Scherf designed what most ladies — and a few gentlemen — would call a pretty fierce shoe, and used the 3-maticSTL software to design the metal heel and its internal honeycomb support structure.
The body of the shoe is made from traditional materials and the heel itself is printed by metal additive manufacturing company Layerwise.
The results speak for themselves, the shoe is beautiful and the metal heel is both bold and seems oddly restrained despite its complexity.
It’s also strong thanks to the structure embedded in the heel itself.
