8/25/2023 0 Comments Futurecraft![]() Each thread serves a purpose, the video noted. “With Strung for the first time, we can program single threads in any direction, where each thread has a different property or strength," Fionn Corcoran-Tadd, an innovation designer at Adidas' Futurecraft lab, said in a company video. The company takes customized data from the Adidas Athlete Intelligence Engine to make the shoe, according to Kram/Weisshaar's website.Ĭloseup of the weaving process behind a Futurecraft.Strung shoe Photo: Adidas In fact, Tibbits coined the term 4D printing to describe this process in 2013. What they call their “4D sole" consists of a design combining 3D printing with materials that can change their shape and properties over time. Adidas customizes the weaving of the shoe's “fabric" (really more like an elaborate woven string figure, a cat's cradle to fit the foot) to achieve a close and comfortable fit, the company says. It will be able to use motion capture of an athlete's foot and feedback from the athlete to make the design specific to the athlete's specific gait. This more flexible design can benefit athletes in multiple sports, according to an Adidas blog post. The company bases its Futurecraft.Strung design on high-resolution scans of how runners' feet move as they travel. But now, he says, Adidas is bringing robotics and a threaded design to the upper part of the shoe. “Most 3D printing in the footwear space has been focused on the midsole or outsole, like the bottom of the shoe," Tibbits explains. In less than a year the team built the software and hardware for the upper part of the shoe, called Strung uppers. Then two years later, Adidas Futurecraft, the company's innovation incubator, began collaborating with digital design studio Kram/Weisshaar. Photo: AdidasĪdidas began working on the Futurecraft.Strung project in 2016. “It's pretty well suited."īeginning with a 3D-printed sole, Adidas robots weave together some 2000 threads from up to 10 different sneaker yarns to make one Futurecraft.Strung shoe-expected on the marketplace later this year or sometime in 2022. “There are really interesting complex geometry problems," he says. Skylar Tibbits, founder and co-director of the Self-Assembly Lab and associate professor in MIT's Department of Architecture, says that because of its small scale, footwear has been an area of focus for 3D printing and additive manufacturing, which involves adding material bit by bit. Using a customized, 3D-printed sole, a Futurecraft.Strung manufacturing robot can place some 2,000 threads from up to 10 different sneaker yarns in one upper section of the shoe. ![]() ![]() This is why Adidas has married 3D printing with robotic automation in a mass-market footwear project it's called Futurecraft.Strung, expected to be available for purchase as soon as later this year. For athletes trying to run as fast as humanly possible, a runner's shoe can also become a work of individually customized engineering. For athletes trying to run fast, the proper shoe can be essential to achieving peak performance.
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