Bags / Shoes & Accessories

Traditional footwear manufacturing is a time-consuming process. Due to the high cost of tools and production constraints, the initial design, tool and prototype production may take several months to complete, and the cost is not small. In addition, the product design must match the production method, which also leads to the design being limited by traditional injection molding and other processes. Designers often revise their products repeatedly to meet the production standards after the prototype production stage, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation reported.

In recent years, shoe manufacturers have integrated 3D printing technology into existing processes and achieved great success. Some experts predict that the rising trend of footwear manufacturing will increase in the next decade. The predicted expansion is due to the impact of 3D printing on the speed of market, product changes, customization possibilities, durability and design freedom. By the end of 2030, the total revenue related to 3D printing footwear is expected to exceed US $9 billion - a significant increase from the US $1.4 billion expected in 2020, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation reported.

Manufacturing advantages of 3D printing shoes

3D printing enables shoe manufacturers to avoid problems such as design restrictions. The 3D printer adopts a digital way to speed up the product iteration, without injection molding and can expand the possibility of customization. Companies that integrate 3D printing into the footwear manufacturing process have three advantages:

1 Accelerate the time to market Compared with traditional manufacturing, developers who use 3D printing shoes can bring new products to the market in a very short time. The increase in speed comes from two factors: simplified innovation cycle and on-demand production.

Simplified innovation cycle:

Compared with traditional methods such as injection molding, 3D printing enables designers to iterate more prototypes in each batch. Through the automatic generation platform of lattice model, LuxStudio helps 3D printing elastomers to build complex structures (lattice structures), so that products can break through the inherent limitations of materials and structures, and upgrade to a new and more accurate performance stage.

Users can easily import the original solid model to try different lattice structures in the software, combine the properties of elastic materials, and find the desired appearance and mechanical properties. At the same time, for Qingfeng's printing technology, LuxStudio also provides printability analysis and corresponding printing parameter reference to provide users with one-stop design services.

On-demand production: facilities using traditional production processes need several time-consuming steps to create marketable products. The final design must meet the production specifications, need to make molds, and have the minimum order quantity that must be met. The company can reduce storage waste by cooperating with 3D printing intelligent factories to produce on demand.

The smart factory provides the following services:

3D printing cloud production:

By using Qingfeng's full set of solutions, users can send models to intelligent factories for mass production.

The 3D printing intelligent factory of LuxCreo is an efficient and energy-saving modern chemical factory built by integrating manufacturing technology with cutting-edge technologies such as digitalization, networking and intelligence. It represents the upgrading of traditional automation to interconnected and flexible systems, leading the manufacturing industry to truly realize the digital and intelligent transformation.

Compared with the traditional automatic production line, Qingfeng's 3D digital production line is not only a simple processing and production, but also a "digital 3D intelligent manufacturing" with cross-era significance, such as digital drive, cloud design, mid-stage processing, and interconnection agility.

Through Cloud-connected cloud link, Qingfeng not only realizes online design and remote data "cloud" collection, but also connects the global sales network with PC and mobile phone to help customers respond to the needs of factories, supply chains and market consumers in an efficient, flexible, fast and flexible manufacturing mode.

Intelligent factory commercialization service: model files can also be sent to the factory through the cloud. Technicians ensure that products can be printed and meet all mechanical, aesthetic, cost and turnaround time requirements before production starts. It will take more than one year for traditional shoe manufacturing technology to bring new shoes to the market at the fastest under optimal conditions. With the help of 3D printing technology, new footwear that can be marketed can be produced in a few months.

2 Increase product diversity

Traditional injection molding not only has a long processing process, but also greatly limits the sudden demand for secondary design modification. If the market feedback requires the product to be redesigned, the new mold will eventually need to be remanufactured, which is both expensive and time-consuming - leading to the inability to respond to the customer's demand.

Using 3D printing technology, we can manufacture without injection mold and make design changes faster. The designer only needs to adjust the model file of the product and send the new file to the smart factory to carry out the rapid iteration. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

Designers can also use various functions to create small batch production runs of experimental variants. The lower MOQ of the intelligent factory allows shoe enterprises to produce in small batches and quickly obtain market feedback. The company can make a wise decision based on the market feedback or response, and decide which versions to produce with higher output.

3 Customization possibility

LuxCreo custom insole printed by Lux 3+

The cost and production constraints of injection molding make it incompatible with creating personalized products. Therefore, customized footwear is largely a handicraft. 3D printing uses digital scanning and multi-function materials to simplify the process of customized footwear, and can create products faster, more efficient and more economical.

3D printing is having an impact and improving the production of marathon running shoes and orthopedic insoles:

Marathon running shoes: 3D printers enable the company to produce running shoes that perfectly fit the owner's foot shape. Customized elements such as product weight, thickness and material flexibility can be designed according to customers' personal data, so that they can achieve the best results on the track. Customers can also personalize their appearance choices, such as the structure, graphics, texture and color of shoes. The polyurethane material used for making 3D printing shoes is more durable than the closed cell foam used in injection molding. Some 3D printing shoes have a service life of two to three times that of foam shoes.

Orthopedic insoles: The production of traditional orthopedic insoles is labor-intensive and slow. Professionals need to use a variety of materials to make products manually, so that the insole can fit the patient's foot perfectly. 3D printing uses the scanning of the customer's foot to build a highly accurate model and convert it into an STL file with the stiffness and geometry specified according to the clinical evaluation of the pediatrician, so as to completely digitize the production. The customized orthopedic insole is printed with a single elastic resin, and the hardness/stiffness can be freely adjusted using geometric shapes - eliminating the need for multiple material types. The final orthopedic insole can perfectly fit the patient's foot, and is produced by a more direct and cost-effective process to provide greater comfort and support for consumers.

4 Localized manufacturing

Compared with traditional manufacturing, additive manufacturing allows more localized production. The traditional way of mass production is generally concentrated in overseas factories. The company forecasts its demand for products in the years before the release of products and hopes that it will be consistent with consumer orders.

But with 3D printing, manufacturers can use multiple small smart factories closer to the target market, rather than using a single factory to create products. It is not only closer, but also more responsive to local market demand, such as product quantity, design and customization/personalization, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

In addition, 3D printing also simplifies product design and further speeds up production. Traditional shoes are made of several smaller parts (such as midsole, outsole, upper, etc.), and then glued and stitched together on the assembly line. 3D printers allow designers to integrate parts and specific assembly steps - speeding up the production process.

The versatility of 3D printing improves the shoe manufacturing process 3D printing enables shoe companies to explore more production possibilities than ever before. The direct printing prototype function of 3D printers enables companies to complete innovation faster than traditional methods, while on-demand printing enables production to help even respond to the market and expand at the fastest speed. In this process, designers can adjust the model file to keep the product consistent with the market demand. Manufacturers can also mix 3D printed shoe components and traditional shoe components into 3D printed whole shoes, opening up a new way for the customization of traditional handmade products.

Shoe manufacturers can also continue to improve the production process of traditional shoe manufacturing through 3D printing. Whether the goal is to accelerate the time to market, improve changes, customize or design freedom, 3D printing shoe solutions can help companies achieve it.

As a 3D printing enterprise that has been deeply engaged in the field of shoemaking for several years, Qingfeng has a very rich experience in elastomeric 3D printing shoemaking. On the premise of cooperating with well-known international shoe brands such as ASICS, it has summarized the intelligent factory printing service shoe industry solution that includes the whole supply chain of design, software, materials, and intelligent factories, helping 3D printing shoe enterprises or manufacturers who want to enter the field of 3D printing to solve problems faster Higher quality innovation and iterative new products, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.