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Interview with RESA’s Glen Hinshaw on 3D Printing Shoes

Glen Hinshaw’s path to 3D printing is more circuitous than most. He used to ride in professional cycling circuits, was on the US Postal cycling team, founded a circuit board transport company, was a registered tax planner, was the manager of F1 driver Scott Speed, managed world tours for the Rolling Stones and U2, worked for the US Olympic Committee, managed an outdoor signage company as well as a games company. Along the way, Glen founded esoles that became a pioneer in 3D scanning soles using conventional means to manufacture them in stores and founded a leading custom bicycle fitting center. For nearly 15 years now Glen has been trying to make the in-store manufacturing of orthotics and custom shoe soles a reality. He came to 3D printing not because he was interested in the technology but because it could potentially make his dream of custom footwear for everyone a reality. With his startup RESA, he is trying to realize in-store manufacturing of 3D printing, and we spoke about his journey there.

How did you get started in 3D printing? 

I wanted to improve the way custom insoles were made. After spending over a decade using traditional injection molding and CNC milled processes, we learned about AM and began to refine the process for our specific use case. That included designing custom internal structure forms, shaping the way the insole is built to improve performance and reduce production time. Ultimately we got the entire process down to under an hour, Using a process that we can use right there in the retail environment.
What does RESA do now?
Deploys on-premise 3D foot scanning / Custom design / 3D printing systems to retail and medical locations. Using our own unique scanning technology and use our own custom high speed FDM machines.We provide customized orthotic insoles under $140 USD; ready-to-wear in 1 hour or less.

What partners are you looking for?

Banking on retail in the 21st century is a fairly radical idea for many investors. What we have seen is making insoles onsite is really popular with customers, met with excitement and return orders well beyond what we ever imagined. With AM and our FDM processes, our margins can support more growth, with a much lower capex.

For this to grow, we need Investor(s) and industry leaders in both hardware and software technology, who are not afraid to embrace retail 2.0.
Our industry talk about ‘on demand, custom, on-site manufacturing’ as the wave of the future, people are surprised that we have already successfully proven high margins and customer demand far greater than expected for our custom footcare and footwear.

What is the advantage of a 3D printed insole?

Thankfully it’s easy for people to understand the advantage of 3D printing insoles, it’s perhaps one of the most simple use cases. We all know that 3D printing is perfect for making every part unique, and the best insoles are ones that are individually fitted to not just the customer, but to their activities and even their specific footwear. Its an obvious match! .

And of course we have the data to back this up. We didn’t just offer our product to the public and see sales, we had a national trial program that sold more than 50,000 pairs of insoles!

What is the potential? 

At the most customer focused level, there is the opportunity for almost anyone to get access to a level of footcare that before many would have found prohibitively expensive. And when over 39% of adults experience foot pain, we know thats not a small problem or a small market.

At the same time, retail must transform, those who do not embrace Retail 2.0 will not survive. Resa is a company offering a product that engages customers and fulfills their needs in a way that is actually made more effective by being face-to-face. We are also able to use the data that customers share with us to make them Happy, not just for insoles, but for other products in the footwear space.  With the most highly-evolved, most reliable footcare technology ever developed, we believe the world market can all benefit from our foot shape imaging and custom footwear/foot care products and services, over 14 billion feet worldwide.
Why is it important to 3D print in the store?
Quite simply because having an end-to-end, face-to face process is much better at driving customer engagement.
Because of direct customer interaction, we are able to capture far higher quality scans, that lets us provide a better product, with far higher satisfaction rates. And along the way we get to educate and entertain the customer, learn from them and better tailor our products to them. At the core we aim to be customer focused this means interacting with your customers, there is no better way to do that than in store. And it’s the best customer experience if at the end, you can hand them their product.
You made insoles before through other means, what is the difference?
The conventional ways to make insoles mentioned earlier have lots of limitations, either they are cheap but not custom, or you can have semi-custom and more expensive, or fully custom but you wait 2-6 weeks and it’s very expensive (not to mention the waste and mess if you are milling foam!) 3D printing lets us offer fully custom at point of scan, but at a much lower price, with no mess and in under an hour.
What materials are you using?
We use a custom TPU blend, and in the future we will use more recycled or even biodegradable polymers.
What is holding back 3D Printing in footwear? 
Understanding how and when to use 3D printing. There is already wide use of 3D printing for tooling, but it takes time for designers and engineers to learn what works and what doesn’t when it comes to 3D printing for end use consumer products.


What is holding back 3D printing generally?

It’s not technology… Now don’t misunderstand. We need new and better 3D printing technology, but just as in footwear, it’s the lack of knowledge around how to successfully exploit the process that is holding this industry back.

“Can you 3D print this?”, is an easy question. “Should you 3D print this?” is a much harder question.
What advice do you have for a company that wants to manufacture with 3D printing? 
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that 3D printing is a magic black box that just produces finished shapes. It’s a manufacturing process, and like any process you need to understand how and when to use it.
What technology developments are you excited about?
We are already working on research to better understand how to change the way we build our insoles, by using machine learning and AI we can change the internal structure of our insoles to improve comfort, better absorb impact and even improve long term health outcomes for our customers.

And the Team at Resa care about our long term impact on the environment, 3D printing does produce less waste, but long term we need to not just use more recycled and re-processed polymers. We need to move to polymers that are actually part of the natural environmental cycle, like bio-polymers. We are all excited to see the fruits of the investments in new bio-plastics and other biodegradable materials for 3D printing.

The post Interview with RESA’s Glen Hinshaw on 3D Printing Shoes appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

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Changing the Way Footwear is Manufactured

Additive manufacturing, or popularly known as 3D printing, is shaping a wide range of products across various sectors. We are witnessing a paradigm shift in how products are being manufactured. The traditional manufacturing process is being utilized less, while a rapid manufacturing process powered by an imaginative level of design freedom is gaining traction among businesses.

The footwear sector is also seeing the new disruption. Growing more and more in popularity, 3D printing presents unlimited potential for the industry. Let’s take a look at how 3D printing is already changing the way footwear is manufactured.

Adidas Futurecraft 4D

Source: Adidas

Adidas, the sports equipment manufacturing giant, partnered with Silicon Valley’s most popular manufacturing startup, Carbon, to manufacture a 3D printed footwear series – the Futurecraft 4D. This range is a marvel in itself particularly due to the complex midsole structure made possible Carbon’s proprietary 3D printing technology called Digital Light Synthesis™ (DLS).

The midsole of Futurecraft 4D is a groundbreaking innovation in itself. The lattice structured midsole not only meets the performance parameters but also accords comfort to the users. The design allows Adidas to provide bespoke athletic footwear by altering the cushioning properties throughout the shoe.

The technology has allowed Adidas to use its vast set of biomechanical data to rapidly convert the data directly into a customized shoe for the athlete. A level of customization never reached before for a volume produced by Adidas.

Nike Flyprint

Source: Nike

A typical shoe consists of three parts: Sole, Midsole and the upper Fabric. While Adidas has concentrated on 3D printing the midsole, Nike is revolutionizing the way the upper fabric is manufactured. Nike’s Flyprint is the first 3D printed textile upper for performance footwear.

Using a proprietary variant of the popular FDM 3D printing technology named as Solid Deposit Modeling (SDM), Nike is focusing its expertise on fabricating lightweight shoes. The technology uses a flexible filament TPU to print the upper fabric.

The Nike Flyprint method starts with capturing the athlete data. This data records how the athlete runs and uses their feet. This data is then transported to computational designing software to appropriately design the material composition. This formulated data is then utilized by the SDM 3D printer to print the flexible upper fabric.

The fabric can be so structured that individual lines can be adjusted locally without affecting the global structure. This helps in location-specific rigidity & slackness. 3D printing the fabric also allows unique weaving designs to allow more breathing design, while still being lightweight.

New Balance TripleCell

Source: Formlabs

In 2017, New Balance partnered with Formlabs to develop a system of 3D printing performance-optimized shoes that focused on providing higher durability than the traditionally manufactured shoes.

Formlabs engineers researched & developed a new material – Rebound Resin for New Balance to accommodate their stringent requirements of energy return and elasticity. This new material will replace the traditionally used EVA material for the shoe sole.

The shoes will be 3D printed via a technology platform called TripleCell powered by Formlabs’ Low Force Stereolithography (LFS) 3D printers. The process is similar to regular SLA 3D printing but it reduces the forces exerted on parts during the print process. The platform will print the entire sole as a single piece instead of different pieces being glued together.

Just recently, New Balance and Formlabs expanded on its commitment to continuous innovation and announced the launch of FuelCell Echo Triple. The new shoe will also be a part of the same manufacturing platform using the same material.

Reebok Liquid Factory

Source: Reebok

As early as 2016, Reebok industries launched its innovative manufacturing innovation – Liquid Factory. The Reebok team developed a process that used state-of-the-art software coupled with robotics to literally draw the shoes; a process best described as 3D Drawing, rather than manufacturing.

The essence of the process lies in the new proprietary liquid material developed by its partner BASF. The process eliminates the use of molds to precisely 3D print the shoe in the material which is deposited in layers in a unique geometry.

The shoe is aesthetically appealing and is made to deliver high-performance. This shoe also focused on an energy-return shoe. According to the Reebok team, the most exciting achievement of the Liquid factory is the speed at which the shoe could be manufactured. A speed never imagined before.

Groundbreaking Transformations in the Footwear Industry

The footwear industry is an inventory-heavy industry with the need for manufacturing shoes in multiple sizes, colors, and styles for each gender. This landscape is also changing with 3D printing.

Industry leaders like Adidas, Nike, New Balance, & Reebok are all manufacturing 3D printed footwear in different methods. They have pioneered a new way to manufacture footwear traditionally manufactured through molds.

Their initiatives have taken the 3D printing applications from the prototyping stage to the scale manufacturing stage to transform the footwear industry. For the footwear industry, the digital manufacturing revolution has arrived.

The post Changing the Way Footwear is Manufactured appeared first on Shapeways Magazine.

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New Balance and Formlabs Launch TripleCell 3D Printing Platform and Rebound Resin for Athletic Shoes

The New Balance 990

While I’m not much for recreational jogging these days, I’ll always remember my first real running shoes – a pair of dark gray Sauconys, which I got to pick out from the store when I made the track team in seventh grade; a short-lived activity, as I was neither fast enough for sprinting nor strong enough for shot put. Shoes have changed dramatically since then in their looks and features. Manufacturing processes have only recently begun to change with new weaving techniques, more use of polymers, and 3D printing. With the way things are going these days, it may not be long before everyone’s favorite pair of athletic shoes is of the 3D printed variety, no matter which manufacturer they come from.

Back in 2015, Boston-based athletic leader New Balance announced that it was teaming up with 3D Systems to create the first 3D printed running shoe. The company released its Zante Generate shoe a year later, and while it wasn’t the first 3D printed shoe ever created, it was the first to be made commercially available.

Now, New Balance has launched a brand new premium 3D printing platform, called TripleCell, which is powered by SLA technology from Formlabs and a completely new material.

“3D printing is changing how companies approach manufacturing, with this announcement New Balance is pioneering localized manufacturing. By eliminating the dependence on molds and direct printing for both prototyping and production, their team shifts from months to hours in the development and production cycles,” said Dávid Lakatos, Chief Product Officer of Formlabs. “We’re moving towards a world where design cycles are closing in on the whim of the consumer and it’s exciting to be on the frontlines of this with New Balance.”

It all started last year, when the two Massachusetts companies announced an exclusive relationship focused on creating high performance hardware and materials, in addition to a manufacturing process for athletic footwear. They wanted to create a 3D printing production system, with unlimited design freedom, that would open up opportunities for innovation in the athletic footwear sector – a high inventory, high volume business that involves plenty of craftsmanship and manual labor. But as more people clamor for customized products, it’s getting harder to produce them without embracing modern technology.

Katherine Petrecca, New Balance General Manager of Footwear, Innovation Design Studio, said in a Formlabs blog post, “We saw innovation with 3D printers and materials and started to envision the future of how this could come together in consumer products.

“When you’re able to use techniques like 3D printing to turn to more of an on-demand manufacturing model, that’s a game changer. There are advantages both for the consumer and for New Balance as a manufacturer. On the consumer side, the ability to design and what you can fabricate with printing is well beyond what we can do with molding. It really opens up a lot of opportunity for us to make better parts than we’re making now with foam and plastic.”

Formlabs worked closely with New Balance to develop a production system to bring TripleCell to life

New Balance realized it would need a specific material that didn’t yet exist in the industry. The new TripleCell platform can deliver components that are pretty close to traditional performance cushioning, thanks to the proprietary photopolymer Rebound Resin that was developed as a result of the partnership. Rebound Resin was designed in order to make resilient, springy lattice structures with, according to a Formlabs press release, “the durability, reliability, and longevity expected from an injection molded thermoplastic.”

“TripleCell will deliver the industry’s pinnacle expression of data to design with seamless transitions between variable properties underfoot. This new, cutting edge, digitally manufactured technology is now scaling exclusively within New Balance factories in the U.S. further establishing us as a leader in 3D printing and domestic manufacturing,” said Petrecca. “Formlabs has been an integral partner to bring this to life. We’re really going to be able to disrupt the industry not only in performance, but also in athlete customization and speed to market.”

Rebound Resin has a higher tear strength, energy return, and elongation than any other Formlabs SLA material. Most foam components in current footwear are made with compression or injection molding, which limits design possibilities. But using 3D printing for prototyping and production has allowed New Balance to open brand new opportunities in the fabrication of its footwear.

“What we could do to date is engineer the outside of the shoe and rely on the inherent properties of the material to provide all the performance benefits we’re looking for,” explained New Balance Senior Additive Manufacturing Engineer Dan Dempsey. “Any degree of what you could consider customization is disparate pieces of foam glued or molded together, with a lot of assembly steps on the back end. Using additive manufacturing, we can essentially vary the lattice structure to really change localized properties inside of a single form, giving us the ability to engineer throughout the entire volume of the shoe; we can design a system from the inside out.”

Using the new TripleCell platform for both prototyping and manufacturing allows the creation of shoes with a high cushion zone, which transitions to an area of high stability, within a single design, using a single material. It also helps decrease the time to market.

New Balance Animation

“The traditional timeline for our product cycle from paper initiation to delivery in market is 15-18 months. And when we’re building tools and waiting for foam or rubber parts, we’re looking at 4-6 week lead times. By eliminating molds, we can save months of development time,” said Petrecca. “TripleCell technology makes it possible to easily produce multiple designs at the same time, reinventing the traditional iterative testing approach. We had the ability to generate and edit thousands of options before landing on the high-performance, running focused structures you see today.”

This week, New Balance launched the first product from its new platform – the limited edition $185 990 Sport, which is now shipping and features TripleCell technology in the heel for a cushioning experience on par with its classic silhouette, but is 10% more lightweight than the 990v5 shoe.

The $175 FuelCell Echo shoe will come in September, and the first full-length high performance running product will launch in 2020.

Petrecca said, “The TripleCell 3D printed components deliver more lively, spring-like cushioning than you’ve ever experienced in foam, with the ability to ultimately be produced on-demand in our own facilities in Massachusetts.”

Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.

[Source/Images: Formlabs]

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Interview with Patrizio Carlucci of Innovation Lab ECCO on 3D Printing Shoes

Patrizio Carlucci

Patrizio Carlucci is the Head of Innovation Lab ECCO a subsidiary of Danish shoemaker ECCO. The Innovation Lab is ECCO’s independent cross-disciplinary design studio. They explore, create, and deliver projects embracing alternative production methods, various materials, new technologies and experiential solutions. This lab has a big project called QUANT-U. It is a footwear customisation project by Innovation Lab ECCO. Built on half a century of industry experience and footwear research in dynamics and fit: QUANT-U combines future technologies to create 3D printed customised comfort, quantified by you. So for more info on innovation and 3D printing within the footwear industry pay attention to this interview!

Tell me a little bit about your background and how you are at this point of your life and your career.

I am an industrial designer by trade with a keen passion towards computer aided design and 3D printing. Fortunate enough in my career to be involved in innovative projects, not only from a designer’s perspective, I have been driven to challenge my own skills and knowledge base on a regular basis. Having been an early adopter of innovative digital tools has helped me in roles were transformation and change management was paramount for businesses, especially from a product strategy perspective.

What are some of the most important aspects of your career that have followed you through various roles?

A common thread for me has been the application of digital agile processes between concepts and products. Being agile in product design and development means more opportunities to identify at an early stage a breakthrough design direction or to refine to perfection existing ones. Furthermore, I have never understood how design and styling, in terms of creative moments, could be isolated from the physical creation of a product, particularly when ultimate product performance is paramount. Designers often delegate 3D work to a modeler, and this is often cause for delays and misinterpretation. For this, from 3D modeling passing by FEA simulation to 3D renders used for marketing purposes, I have personally experienced almost any phase of advanced product development. This helped me further down the line with a decent understanding of advantages and shortcomings of innovative technologies during innovation tasks for the entire product life cycle management.

Quant-U

What skills are the most useful to have at the intersection of 3D Printing and footwear in particular?

It might be trivial but 3D modeling and developing a shoe is a challenging feat compared to other types of products. To mention just a few reasons for this: the lack of lines’ symmetry between the medial and lateral sides of the shoe, the criticality of observing the right fit requisites for a wide range of wearers and the relatively low-tech manufacturing processes that causes inconsistencies between the 3D models and the final shape of the shoe. This is mainly due to components that can’t be molded, cemented or stitched in their final shape if not developed in a flattened form. Additionally, a shoe is a soft and hard good at the same time, requiring distinct processes for uppers and soles. 3D printing an outsole creates a decent representation of the final product but 3D printing a soft upper that feels like the final product is close to impossible.

The team at Ecco has had some interesting projects coming recently. Can you go into more depth about what Ecco is doing in particular when it comes to 3D Printing and footwear? 

Dassault Systemes

We are focusing heavily on the wearable data capturing process, both in terms of next generation hardware development and for the advanced interpretation of motion data related to FEA processes with our project partners Dassault Systemes. With DOW Chemical, another project partner, we continuously explore further properties of 3D printed silicone we use for our Quant-U project. There is a lot of hyped and misunderstood activity around 3D printed footwear without a solid solution for true mass production and customization. AM offers the chance to create bespoke parts in series, but this is rarely translated in a consumer product; most likely due to the complexity of the 3D models and a lack of measuring data to begin with. To solve this, we invested heavily on the digital capture and interpretation of motion and orthotic data and the related AI and automated processes for the creation of 3D models without human intervention. With our Quant-U project we are showcasing these abilities on the market already and we look forward to extending its reach to more customers soon.

Which countries around the world are the most innovative in terms of integrating fashion and technology? Where should we be paying attention to in terms of 3D Printing and fashion?

Well, if you consider how thin the separation line between fashion and sportswear is today, and if you consider that technology in wearable goods is usually seen in sportswear, I would put the USA and Germany on the top list. France is seeing a lot of activity related to technology in the luxury brands arena, although still at an experimental level. In Italy, the motherland of luxury goods manufacturing, there is some use of AM processes in the product development phase that might find their way in final products. In the Netherlands, a country often ahead of the curve, there is a vibrant movement dedicated to 3D printed shoes that has been inspiring for a lot of young designers, although not commercially exploited yet. For us at ECCO, a Danish company, we believe to express digital maturity in fashion with our latest project and we hope to engage more and more with consumers from this point of view.

I believe that the next technological innovations in fashion will be represented by new bio/growth materials with a strong focus on sustainability and smart materials that have augmented functionality. The commercial application of 3D printing processes for fashion in general is, and will still be, for few players that have the necessary resources to sustain processes that are still slow in terms of output and expensive in terms of investments. Until a 3D printed product is either fully circular and sustainable or performs substantially better than a standard one, I doubt it will ever surpass the scope of a hyped experiment.

For this, at ECCO with Quant-U, we invested into an approach were a fundamental component of a shoe could be customized and 3D printed using a material and a process that truly augments the product’s performance while keeping the manufacturing aspect intact.

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BASF and Reebok to Release Additional 3D Printed Liquid Speed Shoes, More Projects in Development

Multiple major shoe manufacturing corporations have been turning to 3D printing over the last couple of years. While 3D printed shoes aren’t filling shoe stores just yet, companies are being attracted to the technology for its design potential and customization possibilities. Now we’re in the age of the small series of exclusive 3D printing shoe. Earlier this year, Nike introduced the first shoe with a 3D printed upper, while New Balance has led the way with the first partially 3D printed shoe to be made commercially available. And in 2016, Reebok introduced the Liquid Speed shoe, which uses liquid developed by BASF to draw a frame directly onto the shoe. This allows for a tighter fit, and it’s pretty cool-looking, too.

The technique also does away with the traditional mold-driven process, which is expensive and time-consuming, and allows for localized production. Currently, nearly all athletic footwear is made in Asian factories due to the labor-intensive nature of the mold process, but thanks to Reebok’s 3D printing technology, the Liquid Speed shoe can be made anywhere, including in the company’s Liquid Factory, which is located in Rhode Island.

“The point of automation is to shorten the production cost and enable that automation,” said Chau Nguyen, Market Segment Manager for Footwear, PM North America, BASF. “So instead of a person sitting there and putting a sole on, they were able to dispense it in 3D on the part itself— that saved a lot of time.”

Reebok approached BASF, which it had worked with before, about creating a polyurethane material that it could use to create a unique outsole. BASF formulated a urethane-based liquid that could be drawn on to create an outsole that melds with the lacing on the shoe.

“We provide the material to Reebok that has the required rheology and reactivity to produce a part with no molds,” said Nguyen. “Look at it as if drawing with ketchup. When you draw with this material, it’s already curing, it’s already started to solidify.”

Comfort is key in any shoe (except some formal wear), but especially running shoes, where performance depends largely on how comfortably the shoe fits. The design of the Liquid Speed shoe allows for an especially secure and comfortable fit, according to Nguyen.

“In this case the outsole has wings on it and it wraps around to the sides of the shoe. You have tension at the top of your foot, and usually all of the materials are combined together,” he explained. “Well, in this case you have material attached to the sides, the medial and the lateral parts of your foot, so you get a more custom fit.”

Nguyen also calls the shoe the first high-rebound outsole. Until now, most outsoles have been made from rubber, but the polyurethane allows for better rebound.

“When you’re running, a certain amount of energy is going to the ground,” he said. “So, when you hit the ground, in this case, it absorbs the energy and then it returns it, that’s why it’s called high rebound.”

When the Liquid Speed shoe was first released in November, only 300 pairs were made, and they sold out within hours for $189.50 each. The first batch was so limited because Reebok was borrowing lab time, but now that it has opened its own Liquid Factory, there will be more extensive releases in the future. Reebok is working on additional footwear products with help from BASF, as well.

“The various chemistries provided by BASF—we have separate chemistries for cushioning, durability and support— are central to these creations,” said Bill McInnis, Head of Future at Reebok.

So keep an eye out for Liquid Speed to reemerge on the market before long, as well as some new developments from Reebok. As 3D printed shoes become more easily and frequently made, costs will likely go down as well, making them more accessible – Liquid Speed shoes are already relatively inexpensive compared to some of the other 3D printed shoes that have been released. Many of these other shoes have been made specifically for professional athletes, but Reebok seems to have the average consumer in mind.

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below. 

[Source: BASF/Images: Reebok]

 

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ECCO Steps Forward with 3D Printed Custom Silicone Midsoles

German company ViscoTec, which manufactures systems required for conveying, dosing, applying, filling, and emptying medium to high-viscosity fluids for multiple industries, including automotive, medical, and aerospace, is well-known in the 3D printing world for its two-component print head for viscous materials like silicone. The Bavaria-based company, which began working with 3D printing four years ago, employs about 200 people worldwide, and is now putting its print head to the test through a collaboration with Danish heritage footwear brand and manufacturer ECCO.

ECCO, a family-owned business founded in 1963 with factories and subsidiaries in China, Indonesia, Portugal, Slovakia, Thailand, and Vietnam, has a vision of becoming the top premium brand for leather goods and shoes. The latest innovation to be introduced by the Innovation Lab of ECCO is called QUANT-U, an experimental footwear customization project.

QUANT-U relies on three core technologies: real-time analysis, data-driven design, and in-store 3D printing. The project combines these technologies to create custom, personalized midsoles, in just two hours, out of a heat cured two-component silicone.

Most everyone likes personalized products such as shoes, but due to the necessary cost, production time, and expertise involved in making custom footwear, they’re typically not available to everyone. But thanks to ECCO’s partnership with ViscoTec, this is going to change.

3D printing of silicone midsoles with ViscoTec printhead.

In order to specifically coordinate the material properties and the process, ECCO had to rethink its approach to customization, and now plans to utilize ViscoTec’s print head technology and two-component silicone to 3D print customer-specific midsoles for its customers, so each person can enjoy their own tailored fit and comfort.

According to the Innovation Lab ECCO website for QUANT-U, “A midsole is the functional heart of the shoe. It plays a key role in the performance and comfort of your footwear. Two years of research has proven that replacing the standard PU midsoles with 3D printed silicone can tune its inherent properties; viscoelasticity, durability and temperature stability.”

The QUANT-U process has three steps, starting with using scanners and wearable sensors to measure the customer’s feet and build a unique digital footprint. This biomechanical data is then evaluated and interpreted using a sophisticated algorithm, and a unique configuration is generated through structural simulations and machine learning.

This augmented pattern is optimized for each person’s respective feet and activity level by making adjustments to its densities, patterns, and structures, and the final 3D printed midsoles are personalized according to the customer’s own orthopedic parameters for a far more comfortable fit than you’d get with typical store-bought midsoles. Within just a few hours, you’re able to take home your custom 3D printed midsoles, along with your chosen pair of ECCO shoes.

Thermal cross-linking of the individual silicone layers.

By 3D printing the two-component silicone, ECCO is able to optimally counteract the high mechanical stresses we often deal with in everyday life; this is thanks to the midsole’s algorithmic designs combining with the silicone’s unique properties. By utilizing 3D printing, ECCO will be able to fabricate large quantities of personalized midsoles.

Using ViscoTec’s print heads gives ECCO several unique advantages, such as the usage of heat cured two-component silicone and precise 3D printing results, in addition to making sure that the silicone is uniformly mixed in the static mixing tube.

The footwear industry, which often utilizes 3D printing, has been growing fast over the last few years, with its global market expected to reach $371.8 billion by 2020. We often see 3D printed insoles and midsoles available for purchase now, and ECCO’s collaboration with ViscoTec and its unique 3D print head will certainly help keep it in the game.

Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below. 

[Images provided by ViscoTec]