Engineer Laps Boston Marathon in Custom 3D Printed Flip Flops

Whether it’s dental implants, prosthetics, or surgical cutting guides, 3D printing has ushered in an era of highly custom and patient-specific products. Now the footwear world is moving in lock step, with startups offering everything from individualized ski boots to sandals and inserts designed to hug every contour of a consumer’s foot for optimal comfort and performance.

Wiivv, an upstart in this emerging market, crossed a milestone this month when one of its lead engineers braved the venerable Boston Marathon, this year in soggy and nearly freezing temperatures, outfitted not with high-performance running shoes, but rather with a pair of customized, 3D-printed Wivv flip flops.

The Wiivv custom flip flop worn in the Boston Marathon was 3D printed on demand by Forecast 3D using HP Multi Jet Fusion technology. Image Courtesy of Wiivv

During the company’s second funding campaign on the Kickstarter platform, engineer Chris Bellamy made a bold promise to tackle the Boston Marathon course in a custom pair of Wiivv 3D-printed flip flops if the firm hit its target of raising $500,000 or more. When the company surpassed that milestone, Bellamy was game to “put his money where his mouth is” and run the arduous 26.2-mile course in the Wiivv gear, which is slated to be commercially available for on-demand orders later this spring.

Wiivv, which grabbed the spotlight with its custom insoles, is expanding on its customer design and manufacturing promise with a new line of flip flops that are custom tailored to the shape of your foot, complete with arch size and placement along with positioning of the oftentimes troublesome thong portion of the sandal.

Key to Wiivv’s story is its pioneering software, including a mobile app, that makes it easy for consumers to take and submit measurements of their feet from the comfort of their home. Computer vision and deep learning technologies create a digital point cloud of the feet of over 200 points, which serves as the guide for 3D printing the custom shoe on demand. The Wiivv sandal worn by Bellamy in the Boston Marathon was printed by Forecast 3D using HP Multi Jet Fusion technology. The company also employs 3D Systems’ Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) S Pro 60 printers to produce its original line of 3D printed insoles.

For its new sandal line, Wiivv has also pioneered a process to convert the 2D scan file of a customer’s foot to a 3D model prepped for 3D printing output. While the production will initially occur at the company’s San Diego manufacturing facility, Wiivv’s broader vision is to embrace what the company calls a “local manufacturing approach,” where there is “a printer factory within a radius of every major population.”

Bellamy finished the Boston Marathon on April 16 in just under three hours (official time was 02:59:36). He claims the Wiivv’s were not only supportive and comfortable on the grueling trek, but had unexpected benefits given the inclement, New England spring time weather.

“They were great at the beginning of the race, because everyone else was having to change shoes, and I could just walk through the mud in my sandals,” recounts Bellamy on the company’s blog. “When it rained, it just washed my feet off.”

Check out this video to learn more about Wiivv’s digital design and custom manufacturing process.