Taking inspiration from Nike’s Roshe One, a lifestyle sneaker with versatile applications that I often wore, I first sketched mesh sneaker ideas that could reflect the stability, flexibility, and dynamic design I wanted my shoe to have. To account for a 3D printer’s small printing window, the design I settled on was separated into four main parts: a heel section, a connecting quarter collar, a toe connector, and the toe. The toe connector would allow a person to flex their toes like they would in an average shoe, which immensely helped the movement and flexibility potential for a shoe whose main material is PLA. Another core aspect to the design can be observed in how each section of the shoe includes part of a traditional sole. Since PLA is not a flexible material, my design incorporated nylon cording slotted between the pieces of the shoe’s sole that could both hold the four pieces together and increase the shoes overall flexibility. Meanwhile, to improve stability and accommodate better shoe fits, I created slots in the heel and quarter collar for Velcro straps. After settling on this design, I used Autodesk Fusion 360 to create my first CAD model and sent it to be printed at a local 3D printing lab.
First Prototype of Lunastel
When my first set of parts printed, I discovered a set of problems that spurned from the 3D printer’s limitations. For instance, the printer had difficulty accurately rendering smaller design elements like the quarter collar’s fasteners or the area underneath the top layer of the toe connector. Another issue could be found in how difficult it was to separate shoe parts from the printer’s support structures, resulting in my inability to test Lunastel’s current design. With this in mind, I modified my shoe’s design and printing orientation to utilize less PLA material and be easier to separate from the printer. Another crucial improvement can be seen in my remodel of the toe connector, which was changed in order to create a more spring-like mechanism that would better accommodate toe movement when a person moves. These new toe connectors also featured holes to house the design’s nylon strings, making it less likely for the strings to fall out the sole or get tangled. Although the lab’s 3D printers would ultimately malfunction before I could print and test this new iteration, I am confident in Lunastel’s current direction and look forward to refining it further once I am able.
Lunastel
I believe the shoe industry will be a future hub for sustainable innovation, especially when the ethical production and recycling of shoes is one of the market’s largest problem areas. Today, millions of older shoes are thrown into landfills to decompose, leaving behind an environmental disaster that will take decades to properly address. Lunastel is my attempt at solving a shoe’s ethical production: after exploring the promising landscape of 3D printing, I designed a 3D printable sneaker that could be modified for a variety of people.