VisualMILL Helps OESH Shoes Design Production 3D Printers

Dr. Casey Kerrigan and OESH Shoes have developed their own production 3D printers that OESH uses to produce the soles for their line of 3D printed sandals. With a grant from the National Science Foundation Casey was able to refine the development of the thermoplastic extruder that her 3D printers required. 

Casey also taught her apprentice Maggie Rogers how to use VisualMILL! Maggie is a recent UVA graduate, designer and fabrication specialist with OESH. Maggie assists in the development of the company’s 3D printer extruder designs using Fusion 360. All of the g-code required to machine the design components were generated in VisualMILL using 2, 3 and 4 Axis toolpath strategies.

(Left) Dr. Casey Kerrigan inspects the bulk thermoplastic pellets used by the OESH 3D printers also shown. (Right) The OESH Athena 3D printed sandal in Poppy White.

Here is what Maggie Rogers had to say about VisualMILL:

“With the VisualMill program and our CNC milling machine I can quickly and easily machine new components for our 3D printers. We machine almost all the parts of our 3D printers right here in our Charlottesville factory, so development can go very fast and we can be constantly improving our shoe printing processes.” Maggie Rogers, Design & Fabrication OESH Shoes, Charlottesville, Virginia

Here we see VisualCAD/CAM with the VisualMILL plugin loaded. The component that Maggie is programming here is a Thermoplastic Heater Block showing a 2½ Axis Profiling toolpath. An additional 2½ Axis Chamfering toolpath is shown in the bottom right image while the actual machined component from 6061 aluminum is shown in the upper right image.

More about OESH Shoes

We want to thank Dr. Casey Kerrigan and Maggie Rogers for their time and contributions to this article. For more information about Dr. Casey Kerrigan’s research and OESH Shoes we invite you to check out the following web links:

• Women in CAM: Dr. Casey Kerrigan & OESH Shoes
• Machining a Heater Block in 2½ Axis using VisualMILL
• The Dream Flat by OESH
• OESH Shoes online, Facebook and Twitter.
• Dr. Casey Kerrigan appears in the ABC 20/20 television program.
• More about Dr. Casey Kerrigan.

Don LaCourse

Don LaCourse is an Application Engineer with MecSoft Corporation. Don brings over 20 years of experience in CAD/CAM operations in both automotive and mold design applications. Don also has extensive experience in documenting CAD/CAM products and is actively involved with writing the on-line help as well as creating training tutorials for MecSoft's products.