In 2017, New Balance partnered with Formlabs to develop a 3D printing production system. By creating unlimited performance freedom to create performance-optimized structures, cost-effectively mass-produce custom components, and unlock more material possibilities, New Balance opens up new opportunities in both design and materials.
This summer, New Balance took a big step toward achieving this vision by releasing TripleCell: an advanced technology platform powered by the Formlabs Stereolithography (SLA) 3D printer and the new material Rebound Resin.
TripleCell allows us to optimize the experience of every millimeter of the user's sole with data. Formlabs is an indispensable partner for achieving this goal. We will not only be able to subvert this industry in terms of performance, but also in terms of athlete customization and speed to market.
Katherine Petrecca
General Manager, New Balance Footwear Innovation Design Studio
The New Balance facility in Lawrence, Mass., has now begun to make the first TripleCell product on a small scale, called the 990S TripleCell. It is understood that this sports shoes released 500 pairs in the United States on June 28, and sold out on the same day, has been sold in several countries, including China. The FuelCell Echo with TripleCell's forefoot will be launched in the fall of 2019, and the first high-performance running shoe with full sole print will be launched in 2020.
Find customized opportunities in the intricate supply chain
On the surface, shoes are a simple mass product, but it is not. The footwear industry is a high-inventory, high-volume industry, and often cannot be separated from a large number of hand-made. New Balance publishes thousands of new designs each year, each of which involves different materials, tolerances, and tooling procedures, and finally consists of hundreds of SKUs of different colors and sizes.
This will only become more complicated as the demand for customization grows. The demand of modern consumers is to order customized products from a variety of devices anytime, anywhere, and to deliver quickly.
To date, most companies have only been able to offer highly customized products in one go, using 3D printing to develop and manufacture highly customized sneakers for professional athletes. In 2013, athletes first appeared in custom 3D printed shoes. Soon after, we witnessed more first time: athletics, football, baseball and other sports.
In April 2017, the first player to participate in the American professional baseball game with 3D printed studded sneakers - Corey Kluber
At the same time, 3D printing technology is also evolving. In 2012, Formlabs introduced Form 1, which aims to enable consumers to acquire powerful and reliable stereoscopic light curing (SLA) technology at a lower price and threshold. Form 2 was launched in 2015, and its users have printed more than 40 million parts to date. Form 3 and Form 3L now open more doors for 3D printing possibilities, such as producing large parts.
Today, 3D printing is moving steadily toward making more companies do mass customization. Application cases from all walks of life have been pioneered, such as the innovative project of the Gilelette Razor MakerTM platform, which is one of the first cases of direct-to-consumer-made end-use 3D printing components.
Complete the overall design of the shoe from the inside out at an unprecedented speed
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 been watching.
“We saw innovations in many 3D printers and materials and began to imagine how to integrate these new technologies into consumer products in the future,” says Petrcca.
“When you can take advantage of technologies like 3D printing and move to on-demand manufacturing, the rules of the game have changed. This is good for both consumers and manufacturer New Balance. From a consumer perspective, 3D printing can be designed Capabilities and manufacturing capabilities go far beyond molding, which gives us many opportunities to produce parts that are superior to foam and plastic."
Most of the foam components of today's footwear are manufactured by injection molding or compression molding, which greatly limits the possibilities of design. However, the transition to simultaneous prototyping and production using 3D printing technology opens up new opportunities that traditional manufacturing processes cannot achieve.
“So far, all we can do is design the appearance of the shoes and rely on the inherent properties of the materials to provide all the performance advantages we are pursuing. All the customizations you can consider are just different foams. Glue together or mold together and then perform the assembly steps at the back end,” said Dan Dempsey, Senior Additive Manufacturing Engineer, New Balance. “And by additive manufacturing, we can change the crystal lattice structure to truly change the local characteristics of the single shape, allowing us to design the entire shoe body; we can design the entire system from the inside out.”
True 3D manufacturing allows the entire part to be “beyond the foam” structure. New Balance's TripleCell products will provide the industry's top data expression design and seamless transition between different attributes of the sole.
This new design opens up new possibilities for performance. This is what TripleCell does: seamlessly adjust the entire sole so that high buffers can transition to a highly stable zone within a design and a material.
Prototypes and manufacturing components using 3D printing technology have also changed the entire product development process and reduced time-to-market.
“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 4-6 week delivery period. 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 test 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 stretch resin and seamless 3D printing production system
When the New Balance team started the project, they knew they needed a very special material that didn't exist in the additive manufacturing industry. They needed a competent partner to help the entire project. In 2017, the company announced a partnership with Formlabs to bring 3D printing technology to the large-scale footwear manufacturing industry in Massachusetts.
Formlabs and New Balance have invented Rebound Resin through a well-developed research project that has invented hundreds of exploratory material formulations, and has developed a production system to create TripleCell.
Since then, Formlabs has been working closely with New Balance. Teams of companies have fully realized Rebound Resin and 3D printing through collaboration, from pre-development and iterations, to hundreds of exploratory material formulations, to development production processes including custom software functionality, on-site support and dedicated supply chains. The advantages.
“It all starts 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 is not It doesn't matter if you take their use," Dempsey said.
New Balance and Formlabs have developed a New Balance-specific custom material from scratch to withstand all applications in the manufacturing process and in the finished product. The result is Rebound Resin. This material is designed to create an elastic and restorative elastic lattice structure that provides higher energy return, tear strength and elongation than all other Formlabs SLA materials.
“The TripleCell3D printing unit provides a spring-like shock absorption experience that is more realistic than the foam, and finally we can produce on-demand at our Massachusetts facility,” says Petrcec.
Rebound Resin features a highly elastic, elastic lattice structure that provides higher energy return, tear strength and elongation than all other Formlabs SLA materials.
It all starts with and ends with the performance you can get from what you do. You can run the world's fastest printer or have a $1 million printer, but if your material's performance doesn't meet their needs, it's useless.
Dan Dempsey
New Balance Advanced Additive Manufacturing Engineer
Expanding the boundaries between footwear design and manufacturing
TripleCell's collaboration marks another milestone in the expansion of 3D printing applications from prototyping to mass production.
This cutting-edge digital manufacturing technology is currently only available in the New Balance facility in the United States. Next year, New Balance plans to increase the production of TripleCell products to more than 10,000 pairs per year and continue to expand its manufacturing base.
Looking ahead, TripleCell provides the foundation for unique athlete data and performance insights, creating custom footwear in an infinite combination and producing on-demand, reducing development time and reducing time from product concept to product delivery to consumers.
Petrecca said: “Everything we do now bears witness to our internal work and external partnerships with Formlabs. These partnerships are indeed driving 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 promising future."
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