As a decathlete for the Husker track & field team, Till Steinforth is used to wearing a variety of shoes daily. Off the track, the Master of Architecture student has always had an interest in fashion, so over the summer he partnered with a faculty member in the Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design to bring all his experiences and interests together to create the first fully 3-D printed running shoe.
“I saw a company from Germany, Zellerfeld, create casual 3-D printed shoes so that was the first time I realized it was possible to do a 3-D printed shoe,” Steinforth said. “At that point I had mostly worked with rigid materials, nothing flexible. But when I saw that, I thought I should combine that with sports and try to make an actual sports shoe.”
Steinforth said he has always had an interest in fashion and clothing, which is why he signed up for TMFD 123 Clothing & Society during his first year at Nebraska as an ACE 9 course. When he decided to pursue his idea of 3-D printing a running shoe, he reached back out to the TMFD department, and Kylin Flothe, an assistant professor of practice and Steinforth’s instructor from that first course, became his faculty mentor for his summer project.
Flothe advised Steinforth on some of the design aspects and aesthetics for his Ripple Runner shoe and helped locate existing research about footwear for athletes and how it can prevent injury and impact performance. Flothe said that while some TMFD students have utilized 3-D printing for various projects, this was the first time anyone had attempted a shoe.
“Till is definitely the worker bee, he’s done all the work himself,” Flothe said. “We were testing the product, but we were also testing out the machinery and how it would work with a new type of material, including things like tensile strength and tensile burst.”
One shoe took about 24 hours to print with all three parts – sole, upper, carbon plate. All three parts were printed separately then the upper was glued to the sole. The removable carbon plate allows for the shoes to be worn for a variety of types of workouts, providing increased stability when it is inserted and increased cushioning when it’s removed. The integrated insole of the upper also makes the Ripple Runner stand out, eliminating the need for additional inserts and ensuring a seamless fit.
“I think it’s really unique how he printed the upper because it’s almost like a sock,” Flothe said. “It’s not just the top, but the inner sole as well. That’s not something I’d ever really seen before and the flexible material allowed for that, but it took a lot of engineering on Till’s part and a lot of playing with the Rhino design language.”
“Most uppers are manufactured flat and then get stitched onto the shoe, so the insole gets inserted for comfort,” Steinforth explained. “But this allows for it to be all one object that has an integrated insole while also providing the needs from an upper.”
The process included several failed print attempts before they got a usable prototype that Steinforth happily took for a test run.
“They felt better than I expected,” Steinforth said. “I was able to run and do some exercises with it, which was nice, but there’s still a lot of work to do to get it to a final product.”
The first run immediately gave him ideas of ways he could improve the Ripple Runner, but to have a fully 3-D printed shoe that held up through his workout was a success. He hopes future iterations of the shoes will include more customization to fit the athlete’s specific feet, and possibly an upgrade of 3-D printers will allow for printing all three elements of the shoe at once, streamlining the process and making the shoe an even more sustainable option than current shoes on the market.
“I think 3-D printing could have a big part in the future of footwear because usually running or casual shoes are about 20-50 pieces getting assembled,” Steinforth said. “Assembly is pretty much optimized so it probably takes less time than I would spend with my 3-D printer, but you need heavy machinery and there is a lot of waste when they stencil out the shapes of the shoes. With this, you print the material and there’s no material waste really, other than some support structure. You could even do that part with sustainable or water-soluble plastic if you really wanted to, so there’s really no waste in producing this shoe.”
Flothe and Steinforth submitted the Ripple Runner for the Global Footwear Awards, which will be announced in early 2026. In the meantime, Steinforth is busy training for his final track & field season as a Husker and preparing for his future as an architect.
“I do really enjoy designing products, but I also enjoy designing architecture,” Steinforth said. “Being a decathlete, I always thrive to be good at a lot of different things so I think I could never do just one thing. Maybe in the future there’s going to be a combination of architecture and product design in my professional career. I think that’s my goal.”
No doubt he’ll continue to tweak his shoe design too, thanks to the skills he has learned as an architecture student as well as the guidance and mentorship provided by Flothe.
“The College of Architecture gave me the tools to design something like this,” Steinforth said. “Wrapping my head around the design of the shoe was easier than some of the architecture projects. Still, executing it was not easy because when we designed a building, we often ended after the design. We never built a building, but learning the tools there gave me the fundamentals I needed to design the shoe.”
“I was really impressed with his innovation and initiative and work ethic to get it done,” Flothe said. “I’m really excited to be his first customer.”
College of Education and Human Sciences
Textiles, Merchandising & Fashion Design
