Rjpark – Looking Outwards 09

3D Printed Flexible Shoes

My peer’s looking outwards was about 3D printing, specifically 3D printing flexible shoes. My peer stated that he thinks it’s interesting how practical 3D printing has become and how it could help create other useful every day life things in the future. I agree with my peer in that it is amazing how 3D printing has turned into a process for the creation of even the simplest, most practical objects. In addition, it could possibly replace other methods of creating useful products we use in our daily lives and be more efficient/save raw material utilization.

But, even though it seems like 3D printing’s becoming more popular and being used more often, I wonder if it’s worth to use it to create practical daily life objects. When I watched the video about the shoes (link below), I saw that the shoes weren’t exactly fulfilling its purpose properly. They seemed to be made of material that’s either too hard or too flexible, making them too rigid/uncomfortable or not sturdy enough. It made me think about whether it’s worth it to use 3D printing for a product this practical, when it can’t do its job as well as the shoes we have now. The only time I think 3D printing practical objects might really be useful for is when we’re trying to create products of minimal productivity for people who can’t afford the best version of that object, similar to one laptop per child. As a result, I think it really depends on efficiency of 3D printing practical objects, the audience its targeted at, and how much better the 3D printed object is from the current one.

Peer’s Looking Outward

3D Printed Shoes Link