Quick Summary
Additional Context
Actble, a German dancewear company founded by former ballet dancer Sophia Lindner, has built a modular pointe shoe with 3D printed inner soles that can be individually swapped out as they wear down, rather than requiring dancers to replace the entire shoe every 10 to 20 hours of use. The soles are manufactured in partnership with Something Added, a Barcelona-based footwear specialist that prints them using HP‘s Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) technology.
A Shoe Built to Be Taken Apart
Traditional pointe shoes are constructed from a toe box of glue, paper and fabric, a stiff shank made of leather, plastic or cardstock, a leather sole, and a satin shell, a combination that wears out fast and typically forces dancers to discard the whole shoe once any single part fails. Actble’s design splits the sh