An approach to implement STEP-NC in the footwear industry

Abstract

There is a growing need to automate the footwear industry by introducing new methods and tools to improve footwear production. The use of CAD tools for the design of shoes and their components is increasingly common, but it is a sector in permanent adaptation to socio-economic changes where it is therefore complicated to incorporate high-tech machinery. The introduction of improvements in production is a necessity, so the use of technologies that allow the adaptation of old machinery with the latest technologies in the area of CAD/CAM would be an important advantage for the sector.So far, each component is designed and manufactured separately. In this way, the real dependence that exists between the different components required for manufacturing footwear means that a change in any of these elements implies a redesign (CAD level) of the rest of the elements. This fact increases the manufacturing cost. It is also necessary to modify the way of manufacturing the product (CAM level), which is a complex manual process in many cases. The introduction of changes in an industrial environment with limited resources means a very slow implementation.In this paper, a platform based on STEP-NC is defined to show the advantages that its implementation in footwear sector would imply, by relating all the elements involved in footwear manufacturing: CAD tools that generate the geometries of the components, CAM tools that define the paths for their machining, and the different machines that manufacture these components. Furthermore, additional advantages would be incorporated, such as process control, supervision, inspection, allowing information to flow in all directions.

STEP-NC-Compliant Implementation to Support Mixed-Control Technologies Applied to Stone-Processing Machines Based on Industrial Automation Standards

“…To cover more manufacturing technologies, new extensions to the STEP-NC data model are defined for other technologies, such as Part 13 for wire-EDM, Part 14 for sink-EDM, Parts 15 and 16, which define wood and glass processing and the process of touch probing inspection, respectively [28], and the recently included 3D-printing data model in Part 17. On other occasions, the extension or technological adaptation is limited to working with the already existing features, but using new tools, new materials, or working in new manufacturing environments, such as the footwear industry [29].…”

Architecture for the Control of Machine Tools Adhering to Integrated and Interoperable Digital Manufacturing

“…It is essential to highlight advances in machine tool control languages and to manufacture information exchange files that evolve to an object-oriented perspective and migrate all their previously sequential data structure, such as G-code, for a more robust data structure scalable and hierarchically organized [13]. It was recently included in the ISO 10303-238:2020 standard, additive manufacturing information; this poses new challenges to developing kinematic control of robotics structures applied in advanced manufacturing fields [14] [15] [16]. The development of interpreters for STEP files and the capacity of robotic structures to execute tasks extracted from these neutral interchange files will provide interoperability and integration within advanced manufacturing processes [17] [18] [19].…”