Ecco Shoe silicone midsoles
Examples of silicone 3D printed footwear midsoles
ECCO Shoes, a Danish footwear brand, has introduced its augmented footwear project which sees the company 3D print customised entire midsoles in silicone using German RepRap machines.
The company has been presenting the project alongside German RepRap at formnext powered by TCT, as it readies itself to make the midsoles more commercially available. With scanning and 3D printing technology, ECCO is able to provide personalised midsoles, which bring greater comfort, and with the assistance of an embedded sensor, can monitor gait analysis to deliver an even better product next time.
Quant-U, the name given to the project, has seen two years of research conducted at the Innovation Lab ECCO (I.L.E.) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I.L.E. collaborated with Dassault Systemes’ FashionLab, a technology incubator specialising in 3D design and simulation in consumer goods and fashion. Using Dassault’s 3DEXPERIENCE platform, ECCO is able to interpret bio-mechanic data into geometries suitable for 3D printing. Generative designs are validated through FEA simulations to ensure the best functionality possible.
Data is gathered with the company’s proprietary wearable sensors which have been developed in collaboration with Cambridge Design Partnership in the UK. This data is then combined with 3D foot scans based on the Volumental 3D scanning solution developed in Stockholm.
Ecco Shoes sensor
The sensor embedded in Ecco's midsoles
The information is transferred to ECCO’s German RepRap X400 3D printing systems, and using medical-grade silicone materials from the Dow Chemical Company, the midsoles are manufactured. In this process, the silicone is 3D printed in the form core of implants which replace the majority of the midsole polyurethane. Silicone was selected as the material due to its durability and temperature stability capabilities. With no need for support structures when printing the midsoles, or any post processing and cleaning after the print, ECCO believes it has a concept suitable for retail environments – customers would have their feet scanned and silicone midsoles manufactured within under two hours.
ECCO will initially pilot the commercialisation of the project in February 2018 at its W21 experimental ECCO shoe store in Amsterdam, another brainchild of the I.L.E. The company will offer a select few customers to have their feet scanned and midsoles customised on-site.
While, ECCO is working to reduce the print time down to one hour, down from the two hours it takes currently, the company is still excited to make the concept commercial. ECCO refers back to the long-held desire in the footwear industry for customisation, and feels it is making a big step to making personalised midsoles a reality with the Quant-U project.
“Throughout my experience as a designer and footwear engineer, the concept of perfect fit, perfect comfort and ultimate performance has long been an obsession,” said Patrizio Carlucci, the Head of Innovation Lab ECCO. “We see a lot of activity on the subject of 3D printed footwear without a solid solution for true mass customisation from competitors. Additive manufacturing 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 focussed heavily on the digital capture and interpretation of motion and orthotic data, then made sure this experience would be no more complicated than trying on a shoe in the store and walking for a few minutes. We truly translated more than 50 years of shoemaking experience into an algorithm.”
ECCO is presenting its Quant-U project on the German RepRap booth in Hall 3.1, D30 at formnext powered by TCT.
