Tunable-Stiffness Insole Direction
Investigating how 3D-printed lattice structures can create customizable stiffness across different regions of a full-length insole.
FOOTWEAR ENGINEERING
Athletic Shoe Insole Design Project
A visionary footwear engineering project exploring tunable-stiffness, 3D-printed custom insoles through lattice design, regional density control, prototyping, and future mechanical testing.
Tunable-Stiffness Insole Concept
Regional lattice density and support strategy for future custom footwear applications.
Overview
3D-printed footwear · lattice design · customizable support
This project explores a long-term footwear engineering direction: tunable-stiffness, 3D-printed custom insoles built through lattice design, regional density control, and iterative prototyping.
The current school-safe research scope focuses on customizable lattice density across different insole regions, physical prototyping, and future mechanical testing. The broader direction is to build toward custom footwear systems where geometry, support, and stiffness can be adjusted for different users, activities, comfort preferences, and performance needs.
The project currently focuses on full-length insoles, with future potential to expand toward midsole, insole, recovery-shoe, and full-footwear concepts.
Course-Integrated Research Direction
Connecting research, coursework, prototyping, and footwear performance.
This project connects my ongoing insole research with graduate coursework in design, inspection, additive manufacturing, and mechanical performance analysis. Instead of treating each course as a separate assignment, I use the coursework as structured evidence for a larger footwear engineering direction.
MAE 257 supports the FDM lattice and performance-analysis side of the project, while MAE 255 connects to inspection, product evaluation, and design review methods that can later support prototype refinement.
What I Worked On
Current development areas
Zoned Lattice Strategy
Exploring regional density control, including softer heel response, stiffer arch support, flexible forefoot behavior, and lateral-side stability.
Rhino / Grasshopper Workflow
Developing a parametric design workflow for lattice generation, with future expansion toward placing controllable lattice structures inside custom insole geometry.
SolidWorks Prototype
Designed the first full-length insole geometry in SolidWorks and printed an initial TPU prototype as the first physical iteration.
Material & Printing Direction
Prototyped with TPU on an owned Bambu P1S, with future material exploration including TPU and potential bio-TPU for flexible footwear applications.
Testing Roadmap
Planning compression-based evaluation using lattice coupons and full-insole samples, including stiffness, force-displacement response, hysteresis, energy loss, compression set, repeatability, and comfort feedback.
Design-to-testing roadmap
How this project moves from geometry to prototype and future mechanical evaluation.
Insole Geometry
Build full-length insole geometry and define support zones for future custom design.
Lattice Design
Develop gyroid and auxetic lattice directions with controllable density and structure.
FDM Prototype
Print TPU prototypes on a Bambu P1S and iterate geometry, surface quality, and support.
Coupon Testing
Compare lattice coupon stiffness, force-displacement behavior, hysteresis, and repeatability.
Full-Insole Testing
Evaluate full-insole response, compression set, comfort feedback, and product-level direction.
Current Status / Next Iteration
Ongoing development path
The first full-length TPU insole prototype has been printed, but the current iteration still needs improvement in surface quality and support performance. The next stage will focus on cleaner geometry, stronger arch-support logic, controlled lattice-density regions, and more intentional print parameters.
Mechanical testing is planned for Fall 2026, with both lattice coupons and full-insole samples. The goal is to compare stiffness response, force-displacement behavior, hysteresis, energy loss, compression set, repeatability, and subjective comfort feedback.
Long-Term Direction
Where this project can grow
My long-term vision is to move from a single insole prototype toward a customizable footwear platform. In that direction, user-specific foot geometry, movement behavior, comfort preference, and regional support needs could inform how multi-density lattice structures are designed across an insole, midsole, or full footwear system.
For the website, I am keeping the technical details intentionally high-level. The focus here is to show the design direction, engineering workflow, and product-performance thinking without exposing future intellectual-property-sensitive details.