There are disposed expanded pieces conveniently preformed on a mould which is heated at a temperature high- erthan 140°C and pressed at a pressure of about 60 Tons and these previously preformed pieces can have different densities and resistances.

A system and method for forming a custom-made resilient insert for a given person's shoe in which the contour of the support surface of the insert conforms to the contour of the undersurface of a person's foot.

An automatic system for forming custom-made shoe inserts, or shoe soles, for a person's feet from a pair of blanks (24L and 24R) is provided with a foot impression mechanism (12) including a pair of pin arrays (22L, 22R) for simultaneously forming an impression of the contour of the undersurface of each of the person's feet and for releasably retaining each impression formed. Each of the pin arrays is arranged in orthogonal rows and columns with adjoining pins in each column having asymmetric contacting surfaces (57, 61). The system is also provided with a blank holding assembly (14) for holding the blanks in lateral alignment with the impressions, blank shaping mechanism (16) for successively sensing each impression and for concomitantly successively cutting material away from each blank in conformance with the corresponding sensed impression, and a drive mechanism (18) for automatically driving the blank shaping mechanism both laterally and to-and-fro over the impressions and the blanks in response to a single drive motor (178) so as to form automatically the custom-made shoe inserts from the blanks in conformance with the impressions. A sensing and switching unit (250, 242, 254, 246) automatically stops the drive mechanism when the blank shaping mechanism is in both a desired lateral position and a desired to-and-fro position following formation of the custom-made shoe inserts.