About it. I was surprised.

I'm getting involved with developing alloys (plastic and metal and other materials) for printing with traditionally plastic only machines.

I've helped on working through some really nasty products to some very refined materials.

Currently I'm playing/proofing an ABS alloy with High Chemical resistance. Also has high UV resistance. It extrudes at 280C and chars at 290C and "bird shits" at 270C.

But once you get it right, you can print at about 180mm/s and really produce some nice print quality. Doesn't warp like traditional ABS... but it is more toxic and requires forced air filtering around due to the particulate in the fumes.

It is also hard on the hobbed drive gear.

it is basically a flux-core welder. Only driven with a good power supply, versus those POS 120V welders.

The external is fragile but breaks off... the extruded metal is like any welding wire.

though soft, isn't well suited for continuous flexing like a shoe would be.

Plus the modeling would be costly, since the shoe would have to be designed around the scan... and the print time due to the quality wanted would probably take 100+ hours per shoe. Even @$15/hr (which is way to little) that'd be $3000/pair.