Shoe manufacturing intelligent molding solutions of Huashu robot, breaking the traditional shoe industry dilemma

Industry Background

The traditional footwear industry is a typical labor-intensive industry. And It is facing many problems such as poor production equipment, poor working conditions and slow progress in production workshops, rising prices of raw materials for footwear, as well as labor shortages and rising labor costs, etc. Facing huge international competitive pressure, the traditional footwear industry is in urgent need of intelligent transformation and upgrading.

The intelligent and flexible shoe production line

The intelligent and flexible shoe production line of Huashu robot adopts machine vision + robot + big data + artificial intelligence and other technologies to realize human-machine collaboration, intelligent multi-shoe size, and multi-style mixed-line production, which solves the manufacturing pains of enterprises’ fragmented orders and diversified styles that cannot be flexibly produced.

The production line is equipped with Huashu Robot HSR-JR605 robot and HSR-BR610, which undertake the processes of smart upper 3D visual scanning, smart upper spraying, smart upper scribing and roughing, robot automatic loading and unloading, and sole pressing, respectively.

Key Technologies

Trajectory path planning of shoe upper molding process

Equipped with a 3D intelligent camera independently developed by Huashu Robot, it scans the shoe vamp on the production line. It generates the path trajectory of the robot’s shoe vamp application in real-time planning. The upper model recognition is accurate and efficient, and the trajectory extraction is highly reliable.

Automatic upper molding process research

  • Adopt a double gun design. Meet the efficient spraying of different shoe types, and realize the efficient spraying of glue at the same time or timeshare.
  • Adopt dual station design. Increase the utilization rate of the robot to meet the non-intermittent high dynamic spraying operation.
  • Adopt intelligent air pressure adjustment. Set the pressure of glue application, glue flow rate, the width of the fan-shot surface, etc. according to the parameterized process package.
  • Highly dynamic real-time glue application angle change compensation algorithm. Angle change processing for uneven glue spraying caused by small differences in upper.
  • Anti-clogging design of glue gun. Prevent the glue gun from clogging by various measures such as glue barrel, pipeline, cleaning equipment, and glue formula.
Automatic upper molding process research

Research on the dynamic following the sizing process of shoe soles

The HSR-JR605 is equipped with the latest HSR robot type III system and the sizing control system was developed independently according to the customer’s requirements to apply glue to the molded soles on the production line in real time. Adopting the following type of glue spraying system, which enables the sole to be sprayed at high speed even during the transfer process. Integrated 3D vision system to scan and process sole in real-time. Development of a graphical processing system to adjust glue spraying parameters and realize local feature modification.

Research on the dynamic following the sizing process of shoe soles

Intelligent shoe-making solution features

Dynamic shoe size recognition

Adopting efficient 3D visual recognition technology to dynamically identify the size and nuances of shoe sizes, and intelligently and accurately identify shoe sizes through the process of the big data platform.

Intelligent molding

Using industrial vision, industrial robots, RFID wireless radio frequency technology, big data, cloud computing, and other cutting-edge technologies for real-time data collection, extraction, processing, feedback, and refined production management of shoe information, glue spraying parameters, scribing (grinding) parameters, etc. in the shoe-making molding process.

Human-machine collaborative production

It can realize human-machine collaboration, guarantee the quality of key links, and improve the utilization rate and overall efficiency of the production line.

Modular design

The overall shoe-making production line is designed with double lines and loop lines, which are suitable for multi-scene production. Lightweight modular design with complete isolation of electricity, gas, and glue, which is convenient for scale production and assembly.

Environmentally friendly, energy efficient

According to the real-time feedback of quality tracing, the temperature, and flow speed of the oven are intelligently controlled, and other parameters are effectively reduced to waste heat. The whole line adopts an internal negative pressure design to effectively discharge glue mist, ensuring environmental protection and pollution-free inside the workshop.

Shoe manufacturing intelligent production line information management platform

Equipped with a dedicated shoe molding production and manufacturing management system based on big data and a cloud platform, it collects and processes data on the order information, process parameters, equipment parameters, program quality parameters, and equipment failure during the production process to provide real-time feedback and adjust the production plan of the production line.

Internet-based remote diagnosis and maintenance technology based on a 5G network, which enables remote control troubleshooting by remotely analyzing and locating the cause of problems.

Shoe manufacturing intelligent production line information management platform
Shoe manufacturing intelligent production line information management platform

Effect gains

At present, the cold bonded shoes intelligent molding line, the vulcanized shoes intelligent molding line, and the upper intelligent scanning and roughening production line launched by Huashu Robot have been put into use in many shoe manufacturing enterprises in Quanzhou, Putian, Wenzhou, and Nanchang.

Take the cold glued shoes intelligent manufacturing line as an example, the production line beat 260 pairs/hour, according to 10 hours a day, the daily output of 2600 pairs of shoes. The number of workers is reduced from 65 to 26, a 60% reduction, significantly reducing labor costs.

the cold glued shoes intelligent manufacturing line

The quality of products, consumption rate, and environmental protection have been greatly improved, and the VOC emission in the workshop has been reduced from greater than 5 levels to within 2 levels. The product qualification rate is increased from 96% to 99.5%; the appearance quality qualification rate is 100%, which is a significant increase compared with 96% of the traditional shoe production line.

The return cycle of equipment investment is only 2 years; the workshop realizes information management, which greatly saves the management cost of the enterprise and realizes low risk, high efficiency, high return, and green.