My name is Tome Welsh. I thank you for the invitation to speak to you today.

I am here to talk about digital data collection and use for the shoe industry.

My company builds hardware and software for 3D data collection and manipulation. I have been doing this for 35 years.

In that time I have worked with most digitizing technologies across many industries.

Today I am here to share some insights about the various ways to digitize and show how it is and might be used in the shoe industry.

Graphic: Skiron on MS bridging slide diagonal LL to UR with scan across part in top triangle and probe touching same part in lower triangle.

Revware's history, the kind of projets that I and the company have been involved in.
Projects around the world,
Forensics to guided surgery with all kinds of 3D modeling in between.

Graphic: Skiron on MS bridging slide diagonal LL to UR with scan across part in top triangle and probe touching same part in lower triangle.

Data collection can be broadly divided into contact and non-contact methods and data density.

How you choose between one method and another depends on many factors related to approach limitations, complexity, time, and budget.

Contact - immediate mode results, usually less expensive. Prismatic parts. Highest accuracy.

Scanning - results after post processing, collect data now, work on it later, often more expensive hardware and software. Highly detailed, organic parts. malleable parts.

Graphic: Slide cut in diagonal LL to UR, matching previous slide. Scanned part image in top triangle, same part as CAD file being edited in lower triangle.

Data collection can be broadly divided into contact and non-contact methods and data density.

How you choose between one method and another depends on many factors related to budget and time.

Contact - immediate mode results, usually less expensive. Prismatic parts. Highest accuracy.

Scanning - results after post processing, collect data now, work on it later, often more expensive hardware and software. Highly detailed, organic parts.

Graphic: Slide cut in diagonal LL to UR. Part (figurine)depicted as dense point loud in upper triangle. Single sketch of part (prismatic) showing few points defining a geometric element in lower triangle.

Highly complex, organic parts are generally faster to capture with scanning.
Low complexity, prismatic parts require less data and can be quicker via touch probing. and are easier to reimbue with design intent.

All manufactured parts have some error/noise. Adding back design intent means resetting measured values back to intended values.

Graphic: Slide cut in diagonal UL to LR. Lower triangle depicting a manufacturing process where QC is being done in process with a scanner. Upper triangle shows part on a CMM.

The third factor is time. How much you have and where you spend it.
Little time with part - scan
inline mfg inspection, measure day,

Unlimited time - touch. RE of an old stock part, offline inspection of prismatic parts.


A fourth among many other considerations of diminishing importance is cost.

Ultimately, the decision of what approach and tools to use comes down to a mixture of factors.

Graphic: An industrial metrology image.

Digitizing is broadly used in industry for reverse engineering and inspection.

Graphic: Shoe with tracing paper overlaid. On diagonal, a shoe being digitized.

Capture of fresh designs and replication of existing design examples. This is digitizing for design, whether it is capturing physical concept models, or modeling existing components to remake them.

It's design modeling by a fancy name.

Graphic: Component with an inspection report and active digitizing on CMM or articulated arm.

Validating that components manufactured match the design specification. It is applied to both the designed parts and the tools to make them.

Graphic: Think Surgical operation theater image

Working in concert with robots to establish activity parameters and validate their accuracy.

Surgical robots are like any other kind of industrial robot, in that they need to be fed information about the environment in which they are working as well as the path to be taken to accomplish their work.

Graphic: Shoe being digitized in a factory work cell. Roughing robot to the side.

A few shoe manufacturers are alreadying using digitizing tools to define the work of assembly robots. Specifically those used for roughing and trimming.

Articulated arm digitizers can easily be integrated into a manufacturing cell to quickly capture data for a new shoe design and size that is then used to accurately drive a production robot.

Have observed manual methods. Can save hours of time per shoe design/size.

Graphic: Slide split into diagonal LL to UR. Roughed shoe in upper triangle, finished shoe in lower triangle.

Using a digital process to capture movement parameters adds accuracy and speed to an otherwise cumbersome process. A previously iterative process can be reduced down to a single programming pass and still produce better results.

Graphic: Montage of shoe design and process digitizing with end results.

The application of digital technologies is beneficial at every stage of the design to manufactured part process and is already widely used by automation suppliers.