3D Printed Shoes That Look & Feel Great – Michela Badia’s Aphrodite & Detachable Gun High Heels

Over the course of the last few years, there have been 3D printed high heel shoes popping up all around the world, whether it be on the fashion runway, or just on 3D printing file sharing sites like Thingiverse and MyMiniFactory. While there have been some really cool designs that have been created, the main issue that arises when 3D printing shoes, especially on consumer level 3D printers, is that it is seemingly impossible to create a shoe which is both fashionable and comfortable at the same time.

One designer, by the name of Michela Badia seems to have come up with a solution with her latest Aphrodite Shoes.

Inspired by beauty and sensuality, Badia set out to create a shoe that could be both fashionable and easy to wear. To do so, he used a completely different method of 3D printing. Instead of printing out the entire shoe with hard PLA or ABS plastic, thus creating a shoe that would probably cause more blisters than compliments, he came up with a rather innovative idea.

To ensure that the shoes not only looked nice, but also would be comfortable on the foot, Badia printed parts of the shoe using flexible NinjaFlex filament. NinjaFlex was used on the heel and toe pads, as well as on the t-bar straps of the shoe.

“The idea was basically to design a pair of high heel shoes entirely 3D printed, so I used an original system never seen before to join the flexible part (printed in Ninjaflex) to the bottom,” Badia told 3DPrint.com.

The points of pressure on the foot are padded by the flexible NinjaFlex filament, thus creating a shock absorbing effect on one’s foot. “They are less painful than a lot of high heels,” ensured Badia.

The design for the shoes can be downloaded for free from MyMiniFactory, or if you don’t have a 3D printer, you can purchase them already printed for only $99.00. Badia told us that it takes 19 hours to print a size 6 shoe, and it took him 20 days to develop the unique design.

Badia is becoming a well known shoe designer on MyMiniFactory. These are not the first shoes that he has designed and printed. In fact, we did a story back in June on a sneaker-like shoe that he had developed.

For those of you who prefer a little spunk over comfort, Badia also has created a very unique high heel shoe, which includes a detachable gun as the heel, and is available for free download as well. Not quite as innovative of a design as the Aphrodite shoes, which incorporates multiple 3D printing methods and are entirely 3D printed, the detachable gun heels require leather straps and cut manufactured rubber, neither of which are 3D printed. “The idea was to play around with the heels, and get a sort of variation of the ‘White Princess Shoes‘,” explained Badia. The White Princess Shoes are yet another shoe design that Badia has come up with in the past.

Without a doubt, 3D printing will continue to make its way into fashion, and will be seen in all sorts of products. We are really beginning to see it catch on among the footwear industry, and to a lesser extent, in the creation of custom eye wear. It’s only a matter of time, until more material options become available, and 3D printing becomes common among everyday fashion trends.

What do you think about these latest shoes from Michela Badia? Discuss in the 3D Printed Shoes forum thread on 3DPB.com.