PrimalRun

By Johnson, Mickey, Adrien & Michael

About the Project

Modern athletic shoes restrict natural foot motion with narrow toe boxes and rigid soles, increasing injury risk, while current barefoot shoes promote healthy gait but lack durability and affordability for sports. PrimalRun solves this with a low-cost, open-source athletic shoe 3D-printed on consumer FDM printers that preserves toe splay, ground feel, and flexibility, custom-fits any foot type (flat feet, high arches), costs pennies to produce—making it ideal for large-scale donations to underserved communities—and is fully closed-loop: worn shoes can be re-melted into filament and printed into brand-new pairs, creating a zero-waste, truly sustainable system.

First PrimalRun prototype!

Prototpye printed using Prusa MK3S+

PrimalRun is first modelled in Blender

Lattice structures (grid, gyroid) are generated through PrusaSlicer

Here is our presentation booth in the LIYSF Science Bazaar, featuring my teammate Adrien!

During the science exhibition, we emphasized on the sustainable concept of PrimalRun and its importance to high school students.

Our 3rd place MJSSE victory is published on the Macao newspaper

PrimalRun’s Design Proposal won 2nd Place, and was awarded Most Innovative Design.

This is just the start of PrimalRun! We have been invited to join the upcoming Science Exhibition in Beijing, where we will improve our design with professionals in the engineering field.