Rapid prototyping speeds footware to the track
An
Unimatic Engineers product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Sep 26, 2006
Training shoe giant Adidas has slashed its product development time to 30 days from 90, by adopting the most advanced rapid prototyping systems and applying them on a global scale.
Training shoe giant Adidas has slashed its product development time to 30 days from 90, by adopting the most advanced rapid prototyping systems and applying them on a global scale.
Trends in sports footwear move faster than possible any other market, so Adidas-Solomon has given priority to any technology that can speed up its marketing, commercial and manufacturing processes.
It has just completed a four year mission to implement a complete digital process that will allow it to share three dimensional data in real time between its twin headquarters in Germany and Oregon, all its global corporate units and its contract factories in Asia.
The final piece of this jigsaw was the adoption of Object Geometries PolyJet rapid prototyping technology, which is available in the UK through Unimatic Engineers.
Unimatic Managing Director Martin Stevens says: "Rapid prototyping is becoming critical for more and more industries, but few organisations use it more demandingly Adidas".
"It initially used PolyJet only in the two headquarters, but has now rolled it out across its whole development production infrastructure".
In fact Adidas has always pioneered the latest developments in rapid prototyping since the concept first emerged in the 1990s.
Its Vice President of Creation Technologies Gary Pitman explains: "We have been using RP for design verification, but the precision quality of PolyJet models has allowed us to reduced time to market and saved considerable costs because we can use them as the masters when vacuum casting parts for production tooling".
"At a stroke we have cut several step out of our core design-manufacturing process".
The PolyJet machine adopted by Adidas has a print head consisting of over 1500 nozzles which builds the model-master in a series of micron-thick layers of a special photopolymer resin.
The resin has been developed by Objet specifically for use with the PolyJet and cures instantly on exposure to ultraviolet light.
This produces a highly accurate smooth finish, and effectively the model-master in one single operation.
"With PolyJet in every facility, its almost like we can fax the latest soles around the world", say Pitman.
"Every designers, engineers and managers can pick them up feel them, turn them over, squint, grunt and give their definitive opinion immediately".
With this capability in place Adidas is now looking to apply it to its accessories and equipment division that makes balls, shin guards, gloves, goggles and all the other paraphernalia of the modern sportsman.
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