Zellerfeld turns to Fraunhofer Iapt to scale his shoes additive production | Voxelmatters

Zellerfeld, a pioneer and head of the new age of 3D printed shoes, grew from the basement of a business in New York City to an internationally successful manufacturer (and marketplace for) on-demand, completely 3D print designer and personalized shoes. After the company has built its own facility with 200 3D printers and the possibility of producing a few hundred couples, he would like to scale its production environment to several thousand, up to 5,000 3D printer. Zellerfeld turned to the Fraunhofer Institute for Additive Production Technologies IAPT expert to design the new infrastructure that is the world's largest additive production factory.

Lennard Stoever, co-founder and president of Zellerfeld, commented on the collaboration: “Fraunhofer IAPT helped us to find important findings with a practical analysis on validating-a valuable basis for our further scaling.”

Additive Production (Additive Manufacturing for Production) opens up numerous options, from resource -efficient light constructions to tailor -made components in stack size 1 such as patient -specific implants or personalized products. This is where the business model of the German-American company Zellerfeld comes into play. It revolutionizes shoe production through 3D printing functioning shoes with different designs. The additive production of the shoes is based on individual scans, which makes it completely digital and generally more sustainable.

This success has led to a rapidly growing demand and put Zellerfeld under pressure to expand its production capacities. The transition from hundreds to thousands of 3D printers requires precise planning of the spatial requirements and at the same time maintains legal regulations and security aspects. At the same time, Zellerfeld aims to identify and use optimization options in the production process.

For the success of this large project, Zellerfeld relies on the advice and expertise of Fraunhofer IAPT on the entire on the production route. Applied research by Fraunhofer IAPT contributes to improving industrial production processes and supports Zellerfeld in its growth structures.

Fraunhofer Iapt and Zellerfeld have completed the first phase of the project with the definition of the requirements for highly scaled production. During the six -week project, the production metrics that are relevant for the scaling of the current production concept were checked, validated and evaluated. The team of Fraunhofer Iapt identified bottlenecks, emphasized opportunities and developed practical measures for the action. The Catalog requirements also made recommendations, especially for fire protection, to ensure safe and conforming production.

A central result of the work of Fraunhofer Iapt is a layout of the production environment. It not only takes into account the arrangement of production areas, but also office space and measures for fault tolerance. A justified evaluation of the space requirement forms the basis for long -term improvements. Fraunhofer IAPT has given technical and regulatory guidelines for the selection of an optimal property as a future production site.

The jointly developed concept enables Zellerfeld to implement its growth strategy in a structured and future-oriented manner and to significantly increase the production from the current 200 3D printers to up to 5,000 3D printer. It was created in close cooperation with the employees of Zellerfeld. Fraunhofer Iapt's methodology ensures a theoretically sound solution and practically with the actual production needs.