3D printed insoles

Buchanan Orthotics is pleased to offer 3d printed insoles. The company is now replacing its Thermoplastic insole shells with the new 3D printed materials. These have been tested and now offer the same level of support and durability. 

Why 3d print insoles

Previously Buchanan Orthotics milled all hard shelled (plastic) insoles. This involved using a milling machine to carve out the insole from a solid block of plastic.

There is a significant amount of plastic wastage from this process.

When you 3d print only the insole is printed and this results in minimised waste material.

3d printing also enables different design options that are not available to traditional manufacturing, such as sections of mesh to reduce pressure. There are also options to reduce the bulk of devices while still providing support enabling more slimline devices.

How do I order your 3d printed insoles

To order our 3d printed insoles, we require a cast, foam impression box or 3d scan of the foot as well as an order/chart including the specification that you would like manufactured.

We have a custom functional foot orthosis order chart to help with specifying the insole.

We can accept scans in either .STL format or from the Techmed 3DsizeME app.

What printer are we using?

We use a Formlabs Fuse 1 in which we print in polypropelene for our hard shell insoles and for soft TPU insoles we have a farm of FDM printers. This allows us to be able to print both hard and flexible insoles.