3D Systems has, for a while now, used original 3D printed shoes quite prolifically as part of its various marketing campaigns. 3D printed shoes in various styles, colours, sizes and quantities are a familiar site at the company’s café style booths at shows and exhibitions in particular.
One of the things that has been intermittently leveled at the company though, is which 3D printers produced the shoes. Often in the Cube café, a pair of high resolution shoes would be sitting next to or on top of a Cube 3D printer — implying that the shoe came off said printer, even while the more informed 3D printing community members would assume that this was not the case. I’ve seen the tactic challenged a few times over the last couple of years, but never seen or heard a direct answer. Rather it has been one of those marketing ploys that has been left, more or less, alone.
Until now. Cubify has now released 3D files for four pairs of shoes, designed by Janne Kyttanen of 3D Systems (formerly Freedom of Creation) that can specifically be printed, unattended apparently, on the CubeX 3D printer. The files are freely downloadable at Cubify. So this gives the critics a two-part answer really. In that now it is possible to print these designer shoes on a consumer machine, but the shoes that have been demonstrated to date, almost certainly, were printed on higher calibre machines.
Anyway, not to detract from the shoes themselves, which are kind of cool and funky, although, despite the best efforts of the model, do not look that comfortable. Regardless, my favourites are the white ones shown 3rd in the video below.
