Soon enough, everything will be 3D-printed: your house, your food and of course, your clothes. But first, your creps. Adidas have been banging on about 3D printing shoes for a while now, but finally, oh god finally, they’ve announced the exact shape they’re going to send into mass production. It’ll be called the Futurecraft 4D, presumably because it will enable you to travel through time, otherwise the name wouldn’t make a jot of sense.
The whole shoe won’t be 3D printed – you’re crazy, this isn’t Robocop – but the sole will be (or more specifically, the mid-sole). It’ll be made using a fancy schmancy process called Continuous Liquid Interface Production (or CLIP for short), which involves pulling the sexy design out of a vat of liquid polymer resin (or LPR – pronounced ‘luhper’ – for short) before being molded into the desired shape using ultraviolet light.
This method of production is mega-quick and extra-easy, so makes it probably a bit better than traditional shoe-making methods, particularly on a large scale.
However, “large scale” in this case it means only 5,000 pairs altogether. Or at least just for this year – adidas says that it wants to bump that number up to 100,000 by the end of 2018, providing they don’t all fall apart or something.
I don’t trust these printed shoes – think how much printers break down, they’re the most unreliable things ever. I ain’t wearing them unless I get a pair free, you know, to test them, innit adidas? ADIDAS?
CAN I HAVE.
