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3D Printing and Mass Customization, Hand in Glove Part IV

Earlier in this series, we’ve discussed how we’re drunk on consumption, how we use up too much material and that recycling has some constraints. Now we’ll look at how creating and using high valued goods using recycling and sustainable materials is key. Whereas a lot of the especially wasteful waste of today is used on the low end of the cost scale. Plastic bags and plastic packaging survives for only a few days before it is disposed of in landfill. Materials such as PE, HDPE and PP are low cost and versatile. Thermosets can’t even be recycled into anything meaningful but can become perfect forms for a brief time. The lowest value applications also see, typically, the largest volumes and the shortest life of the material in that part. A nice ASA mirror could spend a few decades on a car and a PEI part could live in an aircraft for a decade while polyethylene bags last a day or two. The lest functional materials are also expensive to correctly identify and sort, something that is still often done manually. Due to all of this there is a mismatch between the high value needs of today’s consumers and the low value availability of abundant materials close to them.

Noble and trusted materials such as marble or wood, feel luxurious and long-lasting to the touch. Meanwhile, the feel of a polymer has made myriad inexpensive memories in our lives. There are notable exceptions, some high-value products use polymers well. The polypropylene handles of Wusthof knives, for example, seem very durable and luxurious. The German knife firm has gone further however and now uses “smoked oak” fiber composite materials on its Epicurean line of knives. Instead of an oil-based polymer or a costly wood, these fiber-based materials can give the manufacturer lower cost while maintaining good quality and a great feel. Outdoor retailer Patagonia has used a significant portion of recycled polyester in its recognizable product line. 72% of its collection now uses one recycled material or other and the firm also uses recycled wool, cotton, and cashmere.

One could look at other ways than just recycling materials and turning them into near new ones. Patagonia’s worn wear program patches up your jackets so they look visibly repaired but last longer. Asos’ reclaimed vintage line reportedly uses deadstock and old styles and turns them into new ones while Beyond Retro uses vintage clothing as fabric for new styles. Alternative methods can be found in 3D printing where materials such as hemp fill PLA replace an energy-intensive material with lower intensity hemp used as a filler. I like Wusthofs fiber examples and the 3D printed hemp fill because what you can do as a firm or designer is to craft a new feel, look and process to give people a completely new sensation. Using low impact and recycled materials it is possible to give a wholly contemporary branded material a sense of purpose that showcases its humble recycled origins while making the people using it feel better about themselves. Positioning these products in the higher echelon of branded products elevates the recycling process and makes for good business cases. Yes recycled napkins will elevate and use a vast quantity of material in a “morally superior” way but if we make good recycled materials design the pinnacle of achievement we will position renewed goods as a growing business set to expand across the globe.

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Fast Things 7: On Demand Manufacturing, Float Like a Butterfly

“Insurers receive premiums upfront and pay claims later….This collect-now, pay-later model leaves us holding large sums…money we call “float” …that will eventually go to others. Meanwhile, we get to invest this float for Berkshire’s benefit.” Warren Buffet

“Float like a butterfly sting like a bee…his hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.” Muhammad Ali

If things are to be produced quickly, on demand is the final goal. Sneakers or headphones, while you wait, would be wonderful for 3D Printing. Now we can only really make very tiny things limited in usability and finish while people stood by. Even the most patient would not be able to deal with the excruciatingly slow print times of current 3D printers. I think our technology would be seen as a lot less magical if someone would have told the muggles that it takes us between four and twenty-four hours to 3D print an iPhone case. Happily, we jump skipped and missed telling them this, so they still think we’re some whizz-bang wish fulfillment technology. If we’re realistic, however, we must admit that it will take us some time to improve our surface finish and quality for many goods. We can do a lot now, but we need to cherry pick the right applications for the technology to make sense.

If we do look at marble to volleyball sized objects out of polymers that are relatively valuable because they need a custom shape or texture, there is a world for us to explore. Insoles, soles, sunglasses, headphones, golf club handles, any other sports equipment handles, steering wheels, any hats or helmets, goggles, prosthetics, braces, jewelry, Bijoux, and toys are already large categories that are each worth many billions more than our entire industry. Making a dent in any of them would validate our technology. On the one hand, we can outperform by enabling the implementation of true mass customization for relatively low-cost items worldwide. We will cover this in another article in this series. A much less hype sounding thing can be done simultaneously as well: on-demand production. Producing on demand has some apparent advantages that benefit businesses.

Faster to market. You can go from an idea to a product in a day with 3D Printing. That means that your design teams can get products in stores faster. Quicker response to trends and wishes means that your offering can be more compelling and more on point. Beat your competition by being available before they’ve even made a deal with a supplier.

Agile Engineering. You can also develop products through agile engineering, whereby more iterations lead to more testing and better end products. Other teams in your company can provide data or feedback, which can lead to changes in the final design.

Feedback based tweaking. At the same time, you will change what “final design” means. With few items in store, you can quickly drop something that doesn’t work or print more if it does.  You can listen to your customers and tweak products day by bad based on their feedback. An SKU that would run for a year now lasts for a day, ever adapted ever better for the market and the prospect.

Perfect sizes. By producing on demand, you can in a short time have the perfect size available for each customer. Also, in terms of size, this means less stock and less unsold stock. If your production times were manageable, you could have one fitting unit per discrete size available. Or with other types of things may have one example product that can then be customized. One size fits all things.

Niche products. You can develop products for specific niches, even if they are ultra small. Is there a group of blues aficionados in your town? Perhaps make some earbud covers specifically tailored to this group, or design something around a particular type of person specific to your city.

Hyperlocal. Maybe the graffiti artist only active on your block wants to turn her work into a broche? Maybe your local middle school basketball team wants a cookie with their logo on it?

Customize. Maybe your next baby shower needs a personal touch. With a mother into cheese and unicycles and a baby named Brittney, we can make an ice cube mold for that specific party with those elements as an inspiration. Very touching things made for one can be created with this technology. A personalized cookie tin with cookies with your name on them or personalized cookies with JohnLovesBritney, SamLovesBritney etc. could also be made. Your steak restaurant can easily have their logo seared into their steak with 3D Printing. There are lots of things to explore.

Fail fast fail often. None of the above ideas have to make sense. The beauty of our technology is our ability to fail quickly and relatively inexpensively. You can try many different products with 3D Printing, and many can be happy failures. Start a lab in a big city that just makes ten products a day, every day. 

Get in the door products. You can also for a few bucks make products whose only purpose is to get people in the door. Do things that provoke, inspire, and amaze that no one will ever buy. No problem. I once had a frisbee made that we didn’t want to sell so we priced it so prohibitively that no one would buy. Meanwhile, we did get a lot of traffic from the announcement, and the high price.

Timely products. Raptors, win? Make a product. Raptors lose by 6 make a product referencing that. Raptors lose? Don’t end up stuck with a million championship shirts for a championship that never happens. As a side note, I learned from a friend that for NBA finals and Superbowls hundreds of thousands of t-shirts are ordered in advance with usually the same company ordering both team shirts. The winning shirt is sold while the losing shirt is sold overseas for scrap prices. On some level, this is a comfort; somewhere a person is walking around in a hat or t-shirt of the alternative universe where your team won that disastrous final. Super Bowl XXXVI St. Louis Rams World Champions. 

Less fashion risk. With 3D Printing, you have less fashion risk. You don’t have to anticipate two years in advance that you can sell 100,000 of something. If you don’t sell it, you don’t then have to dump it at a discount store. And you don’t have to overproduce just in case either. Changes in preference or style can be avoided by producing on demand.

More daring. You can also afford to be more daring overall by adding new things to your collection that pushes the envelope in terms of design. Bold designs can be used to create buzz, garner attention, or engage with people who are perhaps a bit too fashion forward for much of your stuff. With lower upfront costs, you can design more daring things that do not have to do well.

No stock. Companies tie up tens of millions of dollars in stock. By having no stock apart from the needed raw materials, you can deploy your cash more efficiently. Freeing up cash for investment, advertising, or R&D, can be hugely advantageous to firms, especially in declining or difficult markets. One firm breaking the status quo could tip the balance in closely fought industries. Free free cash flow can be massive for firms, but the fact that the capital is not all tied up in stock also gives management a chance to be more daring, responsive, and proactive.

Float. In on-demand markets, your customer pays you first. Yes, you do have the employee, space, printer, and material, but they pay you when they order a product. You then turn around and make it for them. Rely on outsourced production? It gets even more beautiful with you paying the outsourcing firm end of the month plus 15 while your customer paid you 26 days before. In these scenarios, you don’t have to buy something on January 1, 2017, and pay half for it so you can sell it in 2019. Or your supplier doesn’t have to finance this same similar step. For the finished product, you get your money up front and then make the person what they need. This improves the fundamentals of 3D printing businesses to the point that it can be used to outcompete those with more difficult access to money or with damaging payment terms. Few seem to really get how float and better capital utilization specifically will have huge impacts on 3D printing competitiveness.

Through agile engineering, 3D printing and on-demand production companies can outcompete through more accurate product development and more efficient deployment of cash in the business. Don’t get into 3D Printing because it is cute, cool or fun. Get in 3D Printing before someone annihilates you using it.

Images: Jan Timmons, Formlabs, ESA.

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China: Case for the Mass Customization of 3D Printed Martial Arts Shoes

In ‘Exploration and Analysis Based on Mass Customization Design and Production of Martial Arts Shoes,’ Wuhan University of Science and Technology researchers Peng Hong and Xia Xinqiao explore the dynamics not of mass production, but mass customization—putting the 3D printing spin on manufacturing, and a very interesting one at that as they go further to explain that while mass is usually associated with large amounts of items being made that all look exactly the same, and customization refers to unique and small productions (sometimes just one item), putting the two together could offer a novel ‘combination of two contradictory phenomena.’

True, most consumers hear the word ‘customized’ and think ‘expensive.’ Individuals shopping today though will keep searching for that item with the perfect fit, color, and functionality—whereas as mass customization could save everyone a lot of time and effort and offer great profit to the right manufacturers.

“Mass customized production could bring the maximum profit, make the products achieve single-digit differentiated production, so as to improve the product value, acquire data of consumers’ need, enhance the users experience and better build the brand reputation,” state the authors.

In the US, 25 percent of customers shopping online seek customized shoes. The authors realize the potential for continued customization via 3D printing, and for this study, they explored martial arts shoes as an example, beginning with a look at Puma’s efforts.

Puma has long been a proponent of allowing consumers to enjoy customizations, beginning with different colors and different shoelaces, but obviously that’s not too game changing. They went on in 2010 to create ‘Creative Factory,’ allowing customers to customize shoes at the storefront, choosing materials.

“However, these customized shoes are too small in scope with too little choice,” state the authors.

Along came Adidas though, with a huge emphasis on customization and the integration of 3D printing into their shoes—from 3D printed athletic shoes produced at scale and lace locks, to 4D shoes launched last year.

In terms of the best product and usability, the research team recognizes that martial arts shoes must protect the ankles and skin of the wearer, while also being lightweight and flexible to accommodate the wide range of movement required in what can be a very high-performance sport.

The authors discuss the challenges of mass customization as follows:

  • Limited materials and molds for customizing shapes
  • Difficulty in making large quantities
  • Serious problems with exchanges of one-of-a-kind products

In overcoming current obstacles to manufacturing customized martial arts shoes, the researchers suggest use of a small foot scanner (by China’s Foot Technology Company) that could be installed in stores to measure feet and then upload data to a cloud database. The customized shoes would then be made in a factory.

“Customized shoes not only are precise on size, but also introduce concept of health to make the soles accurately correspond to the wearer’s foot acupoints as massage function. The realization of massage function helps people know that customized shoes is not only shown in the surface, such as size replacement and material, but also shown in the customized function, which is more important in consumers’ minds,” state the researchers.

Using Adidas’ model for Future Craft 4D sneakers, they realize the potential for better speed, affordability, and quality in product, pointing out that it only takes 20 minutes to make a pair of Future Craft shoes. And with the accompaniment of robotics, turnaround could be exponentially faster—and even more accurate.

“The demand of the professional martial arts shoe from martial arts enthusiasts is getting bigger and bigger; 3D foot scanning patterns uploaded from users can [be] produced massively and also meet the needs of customized martial arts shoes which will be welcomed by the vast number of martial arts practitioners and [also] for sports shoes enterprises to provide a way as reference,” concluded the researchers.

What do you think of this news? Let us know your thoughts! Join the discussion of this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com.

[Source / Images: ‘Exploration and Analysis Based on Mass Customization Design and Production of Martial Arts Shoes’]