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Adidas Futurecraft 4D shoes: The fourth dimension is hype
Adidas is getting serious about turning its 3D-printed concepts into consumer products. Last week, the sportswear giant revealed Futurecraft 4D, a sneaker designed partially with a manufacturing technology called Digital Light Synthesis, which creates 3D objects by mixing light and oxygen with programmable liquid resins. According to Carbon 3D, the Sillicon Valley firm who developed it, this process is capable of making "durable, high-performance" 3D parts, unlike other conventional 3D printing methods. In this particular case, that was used to make and shape the shoe's midsole, while the upper is made out of Adidas' Primeknit material.
Adidas Futurecraft 4D starts a new era of 3D-printed shoes
Adidas is back with another sneaker based on a 3D-printed midsole, but this time the company says it's moving even closer to mass production. The Futurecraft 4D shoe will be the first one using Carbon's "Digital Light Synthesis" process. The Silicon Valley company's tech creates 3D items by blasting liquid with light, which Adidas says will allow it to operate on "a completely different manufacturing scale." The shoes themselves have a slightly different midsole than their predecessors too, matching last week's leaked model with a midsole that protrudes horizontally, increasing the visual 3D effect.
Super-fast 3D printing takes its cue from 'Terminator 2'
In a sense, 3D printing as you know it is a lie -- it's really stacking a series of 2D layers on top of each other, rather than forming a single object. That's where Carbon3D might come to the rescue. It just unveiled a 3D printing technique, Continuous Liquid Interface Production, that creates true, contiguous 3D items by blasting a resin pool with bursts of light (which hardens the resin) and oxygen (which keeps it in a liquid state). As the Washington Post notes, the approach both looks like and was inspired by the shapeshifting T-1000 robot in Terminator 2 -- solid objects emerge out of an amorphous goo.
