Adidas has teased a new 3D printed shoe.The shoe may be a sneaker, a slide or a slip on of some sort.We can´t be sure because we know precious little about it.
Adidas sent it to shoe photographer Tyler Mansour also known as Arab Lincoln.He teased it on his Instagram.Tyler announced them by saying, ¨the future has checked in.¨ He later also said that they feel softer than other 3D printed shoes.
The cautious tease seems to be a low-cost way to create a lot of buzz while feeding exclusive content to key people in the sneakerhead community.Nurturing the in-crowd and getting low cost buzz seems like a wonderfully effective marketing technique. The shoe is called the Climamog and uses what Adidas has termed CLIMACOOL to wick sweat.If Adidas has made a full 3D printed sneaker that is actually comfortable, then the CLIMACOOL architecture could be significant.
The problem with fully 3D printed sneakers has always been that after a few minutes, you get a kind of squeaky squishy sound, and your feet begin to slide around the sweaty plastic shoe.This shoe is very open indeed.And if it has been designed to wick sweat, then it could make for a comfortable and wearable athletic shoe.The diligent shoe press, has found that the shoe has a SKU JQ8739 number in the off white style and is available for around $170 in Singapore already.
Furthermore, they have managed to find a US customs ruling on the shoe.This ruling specifies that the FOB price of the shoe is $28, which already tells us that many 3D printing techniques will be too expensive for this shoe and that Adidas is managing to make a fully 3D printed shoe, which is profitable for them.At $28 for a pair their production process significantly outperforms most other technologies and services.
The ruling also says that the shoe is slip-on and, therefore, not an athletic shoe and is made entirely out of polyurethane.It also says that, ¨The upper and outer sole consists of 100 percent Polyurethane (PU) material. The shoe is 3-D printed in a small size and is baked to achieve the desired full size and having a mesh design.¨ Now that kind of sent my head spinning.First, for this shoe, other sources claim that Carbon and its DLS process were not used.
They base this on the customs ruling which, mentions the shoes name and SKU while stating that it is baked to full size.Does this mean that Adidas will turn to this process in the future instead of using Carbon? Or will Adidas use multiple technologies at the same time? The price of these polyurethane shoes seems very low, which would give Adidas a distinct advantage.These shoes are made in Taiwan, so the Speedfactory may just be closer to the old factory than to Europe or the US.
The fact that they are baked tells us that it is either a low-temperature curing two-component polyurethane or a higher-temperature curing single-component PU (or a heat cured photopolymer or some direct from monomer system).This could mean that some PU specialists have figured out how to print PU independently of the 3D printing industry.Indeed, some exciting work has been done in Taiwan in a similar area, and there are tonnes of PU companies in the footwear industry.
It could also mean that Adidas is using a spray-on technique that is similar to the one ON is using.The simplest method would probably be to deploy a mixing nozzle and print liquid PU like Lynxter and others do.Viscotec nozzles have been used for many different two- and one-component elastomeric materials.
This method would also be very fast, especially if you 3D printed onto a last, which is mounted on a motion stage (similar to ON´s method).Another team has figured out a way to print a biobased PLA based TPU which would be nice.In the paper, the experimental TPU is printed using an inexpensive Wiiboox.
Voxel8 used to be able to print PU as well and perhaps Kornit is using those printers to make shoes now.It could also be Synthene.For that process, a baking step was also required. A team has demonstrated Direct Ink Writing as a technique for PU as well.
It could also be that they used Polyurethane resins and vat polymerization.Another alternative would be to use Rapid Liquid Print, for example. Chromatic 3D Materials would also be an alternative.UK-based startup Reactive Fusion could also do it.Powder bed processes could work as well, but the parts look very smooth.
But perhaps an inexpensive powder bed machine with TPU? Another alternative could be that these things are made with Carbon´s process after all, and ¨the baked to size¨ just refers to the curing process employed by Carbon.In that case, it would just mean that the customs official interprets Carbon´s curing processes differently than we would.We would say that we compensate in the design in order for it to end up the right size, but you could say that it shrinks to fit as well.
But, if it were made out of Carbon material on another photopolymer-based material, then it could not be 100% Polyurethane as the customs official thinks it is.I´m not sure what is being used here but a pair of 3D Printed shoes for $28, that’s beautiful.$28, it is possible, and we have proof of it as well.¨The F.O.B.
value is $28 per pair.¨ Adidas can have 3D printed shoes made for $28 per pair, what about you? We need to stop deluding ourselves.Artificially inflated material and machine prices are keeping our industry small.If we want to grow we have to make things less expensive.
Or other people will come and wipe us out.We do not have the luxury any more of artificially restricting our market to satisfy margins.If you want to inflate your margins and hold back the 3D printing industry, you will get marginalized.
Our little clubby hobby needs to become a proper industry, and in order for that to happen, we need to stop ripping people off.Subscribe to Our Email NewsletterStay up-to-date on all the latest news from the 3D printing industry and receive information and offers from third party vendors.
