SZILIPLASZT – Autodesk 5D for Increase of Efficiency

SZILIPLASZT Kft is a small, family-owned enterprise in Hungary. The company’s considerable history is dated back to 1989. The company’s main activity is the design and production of shoe soles, and sole moulds according to customer expectations. The 70% of ca. 1 million pairs of shoe soles produced yearly by moulds created at SZILIPLASZT go to foreign customers in Germany, Romania, and Slovakia. The production of shoes is one of the rapidly changing areas of fashion industry, urging to continuous development. 

Hence, the company management decided, that the modernization of production, the enhancement of economical efficiency will be realized by a purchase of a new 5 axis machining centre, furthermore the capability of their computer aided design and production processes will be increased by a new CAD/CAM software.

SZILIPLASZT has used the 3 axis tier of Autodesk’s PowerMill CAM software since 2012 to help the various production processes. The aim of the current project was, based on the already existing technological knowledge, to expand the production capabilities into the 5 axis world, while to decrease the time-to-market of the products. 

This was planned to achieve by the following steps:

• acquisition of a new, 3D CAD software to expand the modeling capabilities of complex shoe soles defined by free-form surfaces, and the design of their moulds
• acquisition of a new 5 axis machining centre, starting up, and learning how to  operate the machine
• acquisition of a new CAM software, and learning the basics of 5 axis cutting technology

• The customer expectations in shoe sole design are defined in extraordinarily various formats of production “documentation”, such as complete 2D technical drawings, free-hand sketches on paper, preliminary visual designs (digital or paper-based), scanned – either 2D or 3D – datas, or often only photos, or “similar” physical master samples. Autodesk Fusion 360 with PowerShape CAD software is able to work with these input datas in various formats exceedingly, while it can also ensure the freedom for the user, but also the expected geometrical accuracy for the design of complex shoe soles and their moulds defined by 3D free-form surfaces.
• While SZILIPLASZT waited for the arrival of the new 5D machining centre, the company’s design engineer has been learning those capabilities of PowerShape on a 1 week training, which helped to successfully overcome the afore mentioned challenges.
• After the commissioning of the new 5D machining centre, DELCAM Hungary has presented the process and advantages of the 5 axis technology for the employees involved in production on a 3-days long, on-site demonstration. During this demonstration the real 5 axis manufacturing of a scaled-down Earth Globe model designed in PowerShape was carried out in cooperation with SZILIPLASZT, where the cutting toolpaths were created in Fusion 360 with PowerMill Ultimate CAM software.
• While learning the operation of the 5D machining centre, the company’s production engineer attended the training of PowerMill’s 5 axis capabilities.

SZILIPLASZT is able to design of shoe soles and moulds with complex geometry faster and easier by using PowerShape. By exploiting the 5D capabilities of the 5 axis machining centre and PowerMill Ultimate, the production time – thus the time-to-market – of the prototypes and mould tools of complex shoe soles often with undercut features is also shortened significantly.

The extraordinarily fluid environment of the shoe production drives the market players to enhance the manufacturing efficiency with innovative, future-looking investments. The selection of the appropriate production tools is a key question both in the shop floor, and in the virtual – digital – production processes. The 3D design and 5D manufacturing softwares of Autodesk can adapt to the environmental challenges of such market exceedingly.