Mar 5, 20222 min read

Converse High-Top Shoe Foam Prop Fabrication

How fun is our job... Cannot get any better, following a request from an event planner customer asking us to fabricate a 2.5ft Converse high-top shoe prop display.

We started out with a 3D CAD file of the shoe which we uploaded into the computer connected to our CNC router, so that the machine will be able to cut the desired shape.

We made sure our CNC router will machine several shoes, just as a backup -

all machined from 3lbs EPS foam.

Here is our CNC router where all this machining magic took place

Foamlinx CNC router table for machining foam, wood, plastics and light metals — CNC Router

Then lots of sanding took place

Next stop: Adding Epoxy hard coat which we applied by spraying and brushing 3 coats. Then, some more sanding took place. Sensitive spots such as sims, tiny holes/cracks were filled with DryDex Spackling material then you guessed it - sanding again...

We then primed the foam shoe with the basic orange paint, prior to the actual painting.

Painting then took place - The shoe was painted orange and white, the nits were painted silver to resemble nickel metal, and black paint was gently added to the sole. As soon as the paint was dry, we printed the logo design using our vinyl printer, on adhesive backing paper which we glued onto the shoe.

Then came the tricky part - adding the shoe laces.

We used a fancy fabric for the laces. Francisco, our artist of many talents glued the laces into the nits while tightening and shrinking them inside the holes, making it appear as real laces running through the shoe