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Adidas 4D CARBON 3D-Printed Midsole


Highest-volume production 3D printed shoes in the world utilizing an emergent CARBON printed midsole that converts downward foot impact energy into forward motion through use of trademarked DLS photopolymer elastomer thats heat cured & then chemically bonded to a breathable fabric upper using entirely synthetic materials that are super ultra high performance & low mass for an exceptionally high technology running shoe by Adidas, known as the 4D model! 

Over 1 million midsoles printed with the exceptionally fast 20 micron O2 diffusion interface UV photopolymer 3D printing technology invented, commercialized & produced by CARBON company! One of the fast 3D printing processes, the isotropic parts printed are finished cured in an autoclave or electric furnace to dramatically improve the strength of the resulting 3D printed highly precise parts that can be used directly as functional parts due to their excellence mechanical, electrical insulating & surface tolerances maintained during heat curing that catalyses formation of additional chemical bonding in the photopolymer printed 3D designed products, parts or structures. 

Adidas partnered with CARBON to produce the 4D shoe midsole energy conversion core that converts downward pressure energy created by food impact when running into stored kinetic energy in the elastomeric polymer DLS material that deforms in a precision way to convert the downward energy into forward motion ideal for a running shoe application as a directionally specific mechanical energy translation converting midsole technology. 

I love bright green // ordered these 

Tech Heavy Impulse Buy / Not My Norm 

I do not normally go directly from research to a consumer product, those CARBON'S printers are $25,000 per year to operate, in a lease to own model that includes the O2 & photopolymers & trays & support & replacement parts & curing station. There are other products made with carbon that were vastly outside my impulse buying value point restriction range or price ceiling for a lightly research new product that has medium or higher user reviews but where other market offerings offer a hight performance to value ratio. I specifically got these because of their use of the CARBON DLS elastomer photo-polymer 3D printed midsole. I have been 3D printing PLA & PETG on a Prusa Mini for a couple of years to build functional parts & decorative things & musical instruments & other devices, brackets, mounts, holder, jigs, clamps, etc. 

Value Oriented Shopping

I am a value oriented shopper & thats why I got an iPhone SE 2020 & not an iPhone 11 or 12 - while they offered more tech, the iPhone 8 with new chips (SE 2020) was offering $399 price point with 90% of the performance of the iPhone 11 ($899) at the time / see what I mean. You pay a lot more for a small bump in performance to get the latest flagship smartphone. Meg for example paid nearly $860 for a factory unlocked iPhone 12 mini ordered directly from Apple, at the time her 2016 iPhone SE (OG) was on its 3rd battery & starting to glitch & have other issues after 5 years of reliable daily operation. Meg will probably keep her pale mint green *beautiful color* iPhone 12 mini for as long as practical, another 5 years perhaps if she's lucky as I hope :) 

Bang Per Buck / Smile Per Mile & Mile Per Gallon 

When I purchased our 2005 Prius II brand new back then it was a value oriented choice because I knew that it cost Toyota $63,000 to make it when they sold it to me for $26,500 // the best amount of tech per dollar paid in a new vehicle at that time. I still drive it daily & its gives me 55 MPG on regular ethanol free gasoline. Today the automotive value leader is the Tesla Model 3 in a base configuration // or Tesla Model Y if your into bigger electric vehicles in 2021 // its all about finding products that add real value to your life, not just in their form when you look upon them but more importantly in the function of what they are doing for you! Meg got me a 2020 Yamaha MT-03 MSRP $4699 new & has ABS front & rear & achieves 80 MPG the way I hypermile operate it (quick upshifting to keep engine at lower RPM's for a given speed (MPG instant & average on the B&W LCD dash so I can see how my shifting & throttle & gear select & speed are interacting to pick the best ratios for peak fuel economy to improve my range per tank & reduce my emissions. 

Computers are Multi-Functional 

I use my iMac nearly daily to pay bills online, to write this blog, to do product research, to apply for jobs, to shop & watch content & read the news & share ideas on social media & to make my YouTube videos & to play PC games like CS:GO randomly & sparingly. I get a lot of daily use out of my desktop at home & actually burned up my 2015 iMac 5K by aggressively overusing it a lot for years // I used it in ways that made it get super hot with some yet to be disclosed AI research & other online activities to combat fraud & to reverse scam scammers by breaking their networks using tricks I learned in network technology in college :) thankfully brilliant people like Jim Browning on YouTube are continuing this effort in a much bigger & public facing way that you can watch on his channel :) 

Interdisciplinary Fusion 

Design an interesting intersection between making, fabricating, workshop production, low volume custom products, craftsmanship, creativity, arts, technology applied & science. It brings artists & engineers & scientists together & thats what CARBON did when they created their innovative company back in 2015 based on the core research of the scientist inventor & his brother who invented the CARBON O2 diffusion light engine 3D printing with heat curing photopolymer process that makes highly precise isotropic parts similar to injection molding with a whole range of different polymers that offer different properties or different kinds of strengths. Some are hard & strong while others are tough & stretchy. 

Different Kinds of Strengths 

Consider the difference between a concrete block with incredible compressive strength that can crumble easily if impacts briskly into dust vs a collection a fine steel wires in twisted bundle cables holding up suspension bridges that has nearly zero compression strength but incredible tension strength. Many materials have a mix of properties like the dynamic human bone system thats constantly being remodeled to adapt to Earth's gravity with osteoblast & osteoclast cells using a mix of calcium oxide & protein glue made by bone marrow stem cells. 

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