Filaflex: Flexible 3D Printer Filament for Your Future Shoes

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. 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 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 product to show off some flexible feedstock. Ignacio Garcia, the company’s founder and designer of the shoes, tells me that, printed with a dual extruder and a combination of PLA and FilaFlex, the shoes offer the perfect balance of support and comfort. You can watch the shoe printed below. Fast foward to the end to see Sneakerbot’s rubbery characteristics.

Source: 3DPrintingIndustry.com