Application of additive manufacturing techniques in sports footwear This paper suggests a five-point scoring technique to evaluate the performance of four AM techniques, namely, stereolithography (SLA), PolyJet (PJ), selective laser sintering (SLS) and three-dimensional printing (3DP), in four important aspects of accuracy, surface finish, range of materials supported and building time for prototyping sports footwear

Additive manufacturing (AM) enables faster prototype development for design visualisation, performance studies and personalisation in the sports footwear industry. Among the available AM techniques, stereolithography (SLA), PolyJet (PJ), selective laser sintering (SLS) and three-dimensional printing (3DP) have been used for sports footwear prototyping. A five-point scoring system was used to rate the performance of AM techniques in four important characteristics namely accuracy, surface finish, range of materials supported and building time. Key elements of AM-based footwear personalisation and customisation methodology were also discussed.