Magnetic Shoelaces

Individuals with limited dexterity due either to problems with muscle control or to joint pain can have difficulty lacing and tying their shoes.  These magnetic shoelaces, originally designed by the Ruiz brothers at Adafruit, make it possible to easily put on,  tighten, and later, take off lace-up shoes.

This design improves on their design by supporting bar magnets of any size (much less expensive and much stronger than the disk magnets of the Ruiz design), sealing the magnets in a protective shell, and supporting shoes of various sizes (distance between lace holes vertically and horizontally).

The parameters associated with customizing the design and instructions on assembling the final magnetic shoelaces can be found here: https://wp.me/P9evBA-eO

The design can be customized using the Thingiverse Customizer or, better yet, using a local installation of OpenSCAD on your PC.