When 3D ADEPT Media first covered a 3D printed pointe shoe in 2018, it was a graduation project. Hadar Neeman, then a product design graduate of Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, had manufactured using 3D printing the P-rouette. The ballet shoes whose lattice sole and insole were 3D printed, were said to be three times more resistant than a conventional shoe. We closed that piece wondering how it felt to dancers who had actually worn it.
German company act’ble GmbH, founded in 2021 by designer Sophia Lindner, has pushed the idea to the commercialization phase. The company has developed Act’Pointes, a modular pointe shoe designed to last up to 5 times longer than traditional shoes and reduce toe pressure.
Manufactured using 3D printing, these ballet shoes are commercialized through the company’s webshop, a fitting network and a replacement-parts catalogue.
Why the pointe shoe resisted change
A conventional pointe shoe is assembled by hand from layers of fabric, cardboard, paper and hardening paste, with a cardboard shank, thin leather sole and satin outer: multi-material, glued, effectively unrecyclable and in professional companies, spent after roughly a day of use.
Founder Sophia Lindner danced ballet for 14 years before studying industrial design, and began redesigning the shoe as her bachelor thesis, having concluded that its anatomy forces the foot to adapt to the shoe.
Here as well, the sole is the printed component, produced in TPU. Design work runs across Rhino, Fusion 360 and Blender; early iteration used in-house filament machines and service bureaus, with HP later supplying powder bed fusion equipment for production.
According to Lindner, more than a hundred iterations were required, a new geometry printed every one to two days and validated through 3D scanning, motion capture and testing on dancers from nearby state theatres. The Fraunhofer Institute and dance medicine specialists supported that work.
What makes the sole work is its geometry: Incisions divide it into segments that move freely while the foot is flat, then close and lock against one another as the dancer rises onto pointe so the same part is flexible on the floor and rigid on pointe.
A traditional cardboard shank has to be one or the other, and takes an hour or more of breaking in before it softens enough to dance in.
Two non-printed elements complete the product: A knitted three-layer “skin” forms the upper, with compression zones and a toebox that adapts to the width of the foot as the dancer slides in, held there with tape.
Beneath it sits a patented lacing system that, according to the company, absorbs vertical forces and spreads load across the whole foot. This mechanism would reduce pressure and fewer friction blisters.
The commercial aspect: act’Pointes are sold ready to wear
Because the shoe is assembled from discrete parts rather, worn components can be replaced individually: refill soles at €120, skins at €98, laces from €22, toebox tape at €8.
act’ble puts the lifespan at up to five times that of a traditional pair and describes the sole as recyclable.
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