4. Discussion and Conclusion
Compare to traditional manufacturing, 3D printing can provide a new process to produce footwear and decrease
the producing cost and especially the producing time. Instead of using glue, assembling shoes with special apparatus
also make the whole process different. Eventually, this easier way to combine shoes provides big potential for users
to DIY shoes by themselves. Once shoes can be produced by only 3D printing and 3D scanning, downloading
models and changing the models could be done online by printing out parts of shoes at home. For example, shoes
sellers give costumers frames of instep and costumers can choose different kinds of surface for them. Also the heel
can be chosen and the most great thing of all is that all models are create depends on their own feet including the
insoles. That means costumers do not have to worry about the fitness anymore.
But still there are limitations of 3D printing. For example, materials are restricted to machines while most of
machines can only deal with plastics. Fortunately, researches on special materials are under development. Take
flexible materials for example, although this kinds of materials for 3D printing are difficult to handle, videos of
printing papers, feather and clothes are released. Even the project which is printing by cells has been successful [15].
Making 3D printing shoes as comfortable as the traditional ones is possible in the near future.
Since the kind of apparatus varies, another problem is how to build up a database for costumers and make models
adjustable so that designers can save time to deal with data. Parametric design is possibly a good way for creating
the parts of shoes. In short, this study would focus on the materials for a better way to assemble shoes in the future.