+x Chris Rogers - 4/8/2020 3:43:27 PMThat's a tough one! You'll need a mold or some kind of tooling to shape any surface you want to directly control. Given the shape this means a multi-part mold on the outside if you want a complete shoe shape like your bottom picture. This will be hard to make just with plaster - but you could build a part, fair it out with filler and make it shiny (and a uniform thickness) and then make an external mold - probably in multiple pieces with flanges - to shape the outside. If you are just trying to make the bottom of the shoe like the kevlar lined parts then it could be done with just single part inside and outside molds. The tolerances would have to be right to give the right thickness (infusion is more forgiving because resin will just add extra thickness) but having one mold be flexible would be best. Silicone would be a good material to make a flexible mold that would give a decent surface finish This would probably be the easiest way for producing many parts - metal or composite molds to shape the outside geometry with a silicone foot shaped intensifier/mold/liner to expand inside and give the inside compaction and a pretty surface. This could be inflatable (better) or solid (ok) and would ideally expand with heat or internal air pressure. Bike manufacturers have this process pretty well developed for frame parts.
+x zappafile123 - 4/10/2020 1:09:44 AM+x Chris Rogers - 4/8/2020 3:43:27 PMThat's a tough one! You'll need a mold or some kind of tooling to shape any surface you want to directly control. Given the shape this means a multi-part mold on the outside if you want a complete shoe shape like your bottom picture. This will be hard to make just with plaster - but you could build a part, fair it out with filler and make it shiny (and a uniform thickness) and then make an external mold - probably in multiple pieces with flanges - to shape the outside. If you are just trying to make the bottom of the shoe like the kevlar lined parts then it could be done with just single part inside and outside molds. The tolerances would have to be right to give the right thickness (infusion is more forgiving because resin will just add extra thickness) but having one mold be flexible would be best. Silicone would be a good material to make a flexible mold that would give a decent surface finish This would probably be the easiest way for producing many parts - metal or composite molds to shape the outside geometry with a silicone foot shaped intensifier/mold/liner to expand inside and give the inside compaction and a pretty surface. This could be inflatable (better) or solid (ok) and would ideally expand with heat or internal air pressure. Bike manufacturers have this process pretty well developed for frame parts. Hey Chris, thanks for your thoughts. I'd always make the shoe in two parts and just use carbon adhesive to join the sole to an upper. I need to use an epoxy flexibiliser to make the upper portion malleable so I can bend it to get my foot in and out of the shoe as well as tighten it up with some laces when I'm wearing it.The silicone idea is interesting. But it's a little challenging to visualise how it would work/be practical particularly if it was inflatable. It could be reasonable to make a solid silicone outer mould if I had a set of standard shoe sizes. However, the whole point of this product is that it's bespoke to the individual foot so I would need to make a new mould for every foot. It's already quite time consuming making one shoe as it is. All I need is for the B surface to be wrinkle free, and be aesthetically pleasing. I plan to make shoes for myself primarily but then see if I can sell some shoes to local club riders so I can repay the outlay of the initial investment in materials and equipment which was around $2000 (AUD).