Comfort at Your Feet : Creating a Custom Shoe Insert / Insole

The goal of this project is to create a proof of concept of a custom shoe insole which will help support people's arches.

1. Model Clay Mold
2. 3D Creality Scanner
3. A Large 3D printer
4. TPU Filament
5. PLA Filament
6. CR Studio Scanner App
7. A Computer

Mass production of products is cost-effective but needs standardization. For shoe inserts (also called as insoles), markets need to only produce certain sizes in order for the majority of people to use them. However, everybody's feet are different and with today's foot insoles on the market, people aren't able to properly walk or stand up. For example, my dad has two different foot sizes, and in one of them he has a collapsed arch. Collapsed arch means that the high arch of the foot is slowly flattening out to a lower arch. For others like this who have a variety of foot injuries, there is simply no other way to mass produce custom 3D insoles. In this project, I wanted to make a 3D printed custom shoe insert so that people with different archs can be free of their discomfort. First, I wanted to make a proof of concept and needed a model to 3D print.

The model was downloaded from the internet. I wanted to prove two things. One of them is that with an STL file, I can easily customize the model and 3D print it. The second is that I wanted to show insoles can be made with a different material (like PLA, Polylactic Acid) rather than a foam one. After printing the model, thanks to the Fremont Library's help, I wanted to see if we could go softer while still maintaining the overall shape. TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane) is a 3D filament that makes the product soft but durable. By reducing the infill (material filling up the inside of a 3D print), and using TPU, I was able to make a light, soft, and effective clear shoe mold.

I wanted to show another proof of concept, but this time using a foot. Using a model from the internet (and help from my Intro to Design teacher Ms. Kerr) I printed out a foot with a base underneath it. I elevated the foot so that during the 3D printing, it would automatically create support underneath the arch. Once it was done, I took a look at it. In the image above, the arch is perfectly supported like a shoe insole. This proof of concept shows that as long as you have a CAD model of your foot, you can create a custom shoe insole using the support made from the printer.(Attached below is a small video of the food being printed) This idea inspired the last protoype designed for the project.

After further discussion with my teacher and my parents, I wanted to do one last prototype, one of my own foot. However, I need a good way to get my specific arch, scan it, edit it, and then print it. Ms Kerr suggested I take model clay and put my foot on it. With that, I could scan the arch and the foot shape. A simple phone scanner wouldn't do the job because of how simple it is, so I required a better solution. Eventually, I was lent the Creality Lizard Scanner. This scanner was designed specifically to scan models into CAD files. After getting the modeling clay ready, I put my foot in and created the mold.

Using the Creality Lizard Scanner, I scanned the mold into a CAD file. Once done, I let it process for a few minutes until eventually it was finished. The only problem was that the turntable got in the way. After taking it to Onshape, I managed to remove a large chunk from that circular structure, but part of it still remained. With help from my brother, the shape was trimmed down to just the shoe. All that was left was to print the actual model.

Ms. Kerr suggested multiple ways to print the actual model in a short and concise way. I asked some of my peers for some help. A helpful friend of mine, Nameh Gupta (special thanks to him), tested out the TPU filament on the artillery sidewinder 3D printer, and confirmed that TPU filament would work. Along with this, Nameh gave me helpful tips to print out the shoe insole by customizing the infill. However, during the slicing portion, we ran into a problem. The slicer had shown multiple errors for the printing and didn't "understand" how to make it. Another one of my friends, Tejesh Kothakota (special thanks to him), is a CAD expert and helped me with the design. Ms. Kerr suggested that we place a box underneath it to support it and help with the designing process. With Tejesh's help, we figured out a way to put it into the printer and make it work.

Ms. Kerr and I kept trying multiple prints and ways to improve the 3D print. However, multiple fails occured in the process. The images above show our multiple attempts to get the shoe arch in the correct position for printing. Ultimately, we weren't able to 3D print the entire thing, However, we do have multiple ideas still waiting to be tested. First, we need to find a 3D printer which can print custom STL files. Second, we must make sure the 3D printer can use TPU in an effective way. These are the ideas I must consider to improve on the actual project. For now, I must use the concepts of TPU printing, Creality Scanning, and 3D printers to help me make progress. Overall, I learned a lot from this experience and will countinue to research more on this topic to fully print a custom 3D printed insole.