In 2017, New Balance and Formlabs established a partnership to develop together 3D printingproduction system. Create performance-optimized structures by realizing unlimited design freedom, mass-produce customized components economically,As well as opening up more material possibilities, New Balance can open up innovative opportunities in both design and materials.
This summer, New Balance took a big step in realizing this vision with the release of TripleCell: an advanced technology platform provided by Formlabs’ Stereolithography (SLA) 3D printer and a new material, Rebound Resin.
TripleCell allows us to use data to optimize the experience of every millimeter of the user’s feet. Formlabs is an indispensable partner to achieve this goal. We will be able to disrupt the industry not only in terms of performance, but also in terms of athlete customization and speed to market.
Katherine Petrecca
General Manager of New Balance Footwear Innovation Design Studio
The New Balance plant in Lawrence, Massachusetts has now begun small-scale manufacturing of the first TripleCell product, named 990S TripleCell. It is understood that 500 pairs of this sneaker were released in the United States on June 28 and sold out on the same day. It has been sold in many countries, including China. In the fall of 2019, FuelCell Echo with TripleCell forefoot will be launched successively, and the first high-performance running shoe with full sole printing will be launched in 2020.
Looking for customization opportunities in the intricate supply chain
On the surface, shoes are a simple mass product, but they are not. The footwear industry is an industry with high inventory and high sales volume, and it is often inseparable from a large amount of hand-made. New Balance releases thousands of new designs every year, and each design involves different materials, tolerances and tooling procedures, and finally constitutes hundreds of SKUs with different color and size combinations.
As the need for customization grows, this will only become more complicated. The demand of modern consumers is that they can order customized products from various devices anytime, anywhere, and deliver them quickly.So far, most companies can only provide highly customized products at one time, using 3D printing to develop and manufacture highly customized sports shoes for professional athletes. In 2013, it was the first time that athletes wore customized 3D printed shoes to compete. Soon after, we witnessed more firsts: track and field, football, baseball and other sports.
In April 2017, the first player to participate in an American professional baseball game wearing sneakers with 3D printed studs-Corey Kluber
at the same time,3D printingTechnology is also evolving. In 2012, Formlabs launched Form 1 with the goal of enabling consumers to obtain powerful and reliable stereolithography (SLA) technology at a lower price and threshold of use. Form 2 was launched in 2015, and its users have printed more than 40 million parts so far. Now, Form 3 and Form 3L open more doors to the possibilities of 3D printing, such as the production of large parts.
Today, 3D printing is moving steadily towards enabling more companies to achieve mass customization. Application cases from all walks of life have opened up ground for this, such as the innovative project of Gilelette’s Razor Maker™ platform, which is one of the first cases of end-use 3D printed parts manufactured directly to consumers.
FinishAt an unprecedented speed,shoeThe overall design from the inside to the outside
In addition to working with professional athletes, New Balance is also experienced in prototyping using 3D printing technology. The company produces thousands of 3D printed prototypes every year. And as the 3D printing market matures, they have also been on the sidelines.“After seeing many innovations in 3D printers and materials, we began to imagine how to integrate these new technologies in consumer products in the future,” Petrecca said.
“When you can use technologies like 3D printing to switch to an on-demand manufacturing model, the rules of the game change. This is good for both consumers and manufacturer New Balance. From a consumer perspective,3D printingThe achievable design capabilities and manufacturing capabilities far exceed those of molded manufacturing. This provides us with many opportunities to produce parts that are better than foam and plastic. “
Most of the foam components of today’s footwear are manufactured by injection molding or compression molding, which greatly limits the design possibilities. However, the transition to using 3D printing technology for prototyping and production at the same time opens up new opportunities that cannot be achieved with traditional manufacturing processes.
“So far, what we can do is to design the appearance of the shoes and rely on the inherent characteristics of the material to provide all the performance advantages we are pursuing. All levels of customization you can consider are just combining different foams. Glue together or mold together, and then proceed to the back-end assembly steps.” New Balance Senior Additive Manufacturing Engineer Dan Dempsey said. “And through additive manufacturing, we can change the lattice structure, so as to truly change the local characteristics of a single shape, allowing us to design the entire shoe body; we can design the entire system from the inside to the outside.”
True 3D manufacturing allows the entire part to achieve a structure that “beyond foam”. New Balance’s TripleCell product will provide the industry’s top data expression design and achieve seamless conversion between different attributes of the soles of the feet.This new design approach opens up entirely new performance possibilities. And this is exactly what TripleCell achieves: seamless adjustment of the entire sole, so that the high buffer zone can transition to a highly stable zone within one design and one material.
use3D printingTechnical prototypes and manufactured components have also changed the entire product development process, greatly shortening the time to market for products.
“Traditionally, our product cycle (from sketch to market) is 15 to 18 months. When we build tools and wait for foam or rubber parts, we usually have to wait for a delivery period of 4-6 weeks. By removing the mold, we It can save months of development time. TripleCell technology can easily generate multiple designs at the same time, reinventing the traditional iterative testing method. We have the ability to generate and edit thousands of options, and then finally use you today See the high-performance sports assembly structure.”
Developed Rebound Resin and a seamless 3D printing production system
When the New Balance team started this project, they knew they needed a very special material that didn’t exist in the additive manufacturing industry, and they needed a capable partner to help realize the entire project. In 2017, the company announced a partnership with Formlabs to introduce 3D printing technology to the large-scale footwear manufacturing industry in Massachusetts.
Formlabs and New Balance through a thorough research and development project, iterated hundreds of exploratory material formulations, and finally invented Rebound Resin, and through close cooperation to develop a production system to create TripleCell.
Since then, Formlabs and New Balance have maintained close cooperation. Through cooperation, the teams of various companies have fully realized Rebound Resin and 3D printing from early R&D and iteration, to hundreds of exploratory material formulations, and then to the development and production process (including customized software functions, on-site support, and dedicated supply chain). The advantages.“It all starts and ends with the performance you can get from what you do. You can run the fastest printer in the world, or have a printer worth millions, but if your material performance can’t It doesn’t matter what they are used for,” Dempsey said.
New Balance and Formlabs have developed a custom material unique to New Balance from scratch to withstand all applications in the manufacturing process and finished product use. The result is Rebound Resin. This material is designed to create an elastic lattice structure with elasticity and strong resilience. Compared with all other Formlabs SLA materials, it has a higher energy return rate, tear strength and elongation.
Petrecca said: “TripleCell 3D printed components can provide a more real spring-like shock absorption experience than foam, and finally we can also produce on-demand in our own Massachusetts factory.”
Rebound Resin has a highly elastic and elastic lattice structure, which has higher energy return rate, tear strength and elongation than all other Formlabs SLA materials.
It all starts and ends with the performance you can get from what you do. You can run the fastest printer in the world, or have a printer worth $1 million, but if your material properties can’t support their use, it’s useless.
Dan Dempsey
New Balance Senior Additive Manufacturing Engineer
Extend the boundaries of footwear design and manufacturing
The cooperation of TripleCell marks another milestone in the expansion of 3D printing applications from prototyping to mass production.This cutting-edge digital manufacturing technology is currently only being promoted in the New Balance factory in the United States. Next year, New Balance plans to increase the output of TripleCell products to more than 10,000 pairs per year and continue to expand its manufacturing base.
Looking to the future, TripleCell provides a basis for using unique athlete data and performance insights to create customized footwear in unlimited combinations and produce them on demand, reducing development time and shortening the time from product concept to product delivery to consumers.Petrecca said: “Everything we do now has witnessed our internal work and external partnerships with Formlabs. These collaborations can indeed push our projects forward. We have proven that we can expand the scale of additive manufacturing and Make it suitable for production environments. So in my opinion, we have a bright future.”
(Editor in charge: admin)
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