Haptic – a New Additive Manufacturing Technology for Footwear, Apparel and Accessories Applications

A new additive manufacturing technology for industrial mass production of footwear, apparel and accessories branded as “Haptic” will be introduced. Applying traditional non-digital screen printing technology for additive manufacturing, a totally new approach of footwear manufacturing was implemented successfully in 2015 at Huafeng Textile Group in China. Production was scaled up from zero to 500000 pairs of sport shoes per month early 2015 and strong growth leads to rapid extension of capacity. Multiple benefits such as freedom of design, soft and comfortable seam-free footwear uppers and efficient and sustainable production processes lead to high market acceptance. Using high-solid water-based chemistry allows application of high film thicknesses. Layer by layer various level thicknesses can be applied and attractive new footwear designs can be achieved. Further development needs will be discussed such as moving to full mass customization by changing to digital additive manufacturing methods and achieving higher thickness 3D textures by efficient automatic application methods. Beside of new application technologies for additive manufacturing of “Haptic” there is a strong need for material development as full compliance to chemical safety and full performance requirements for sports footwear have to be met.