To meet the growing and evolving demands from designers of footwear brands for increasingly fine and complex surface structures, United Machining’s laser texturing technology offers a new and cost competitive way forward that can be relied upon to deliver perfect geometric and natural textures.
The process, based on United Machining’s extensive knowledge of high-quality surface finishes, allows manufacturers to achieve perfectly-structured and fine textures in competitive lead times when compared to conventional design and manufacturing processes.
United Machining’s laser texturing technology is a completely digital and repeatable process that reduces manual operations, allows unlimited design flexibility and allows manufacturers to significantly reduce time to market; it is these commercial advantages that have alerted the footwear sector to the potential of 3- and 5-axis laser technology.
With United Machining’s laser technology, manufacturers can improve texture quality thanks to the laser sources (i.e., femtosecond and nanosecond) used.
The dimension of the laser spot is 0.05mm that allows fine, intricate and complex surface structures to be created that are beyond the scope of conventional technologies.
This digital approach, using United Machining’s proprietary software, helps manufacturers reduce manual operations and a reliance on specialised, manual expertise.
Freedom of design thanks to the characteristics of this laser solution and the digital processes involved, enable manufacturers to design and apply any and all kind of textures on parts and mould inserts – a huge source of differentiation in the market.
In the past, when manufacturers wanted to develop their own bespoke textures, the traditional route forward was to subcontract the work out to specialists which often impacted lead times and, on occasion, could affect quality too.
By bringing this element of design in-house, via investing in a laser machine tool, manufacturers can retain their independence, and better control operational efficiencies and costs.
The use of laser technology means an end to tool breakage issues (i.e., downtime, part quality, scrap etc.). and the delivery of a safe, flexible and reliable texturing process.
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