Footwear

Manufacturers and suppliers designing footwear including athletic, designer and casual shoes have a real need for concept models to speed and improve the often rushed design process.

The Challenge

Clear communication between designers and manufacturers is crucial during the design process, because consensus on a design is critical before investment in expensive tooling. In addition, reducing design cycle time is critical to getting new concepts to market ahead of the competition. The traditional method of modeling designs out of clay or milling wood is often expensive, time-consuming and inaccurate.

The Z Prototyping Provides the Solution to:

Communicate with Customers Z Prototyping are capable of creating appearance prototypes of any complexity directly from digital data, quickly and inexpensively.

Communicate with Vendors Z Prototyping allows footwear companies to see complex designs for proofing and communicating with vendors. Z Prototyping are also used to communicate across continents by sending files electronically and printing at different plant locations.

Produce Functional Prototypes Z Prototyping parts can be used to create RTV molds quickly and inexpensively. The molds can then be used to create prototypes with the look and feel of the finished product.

Create Elastomeric Parts Z Prototyping’s ability to create parts with the qualities of rubber allows shoe designers to create flexible soles for customer review and manufacturing feasibility evaluation.

Finished Presentation Models Z Prototyping parts can be sanded and painted to create a "class A" finished look. Exact replicas of production models can be used to solicit focus group feedback on proposed new footware.