New Balance
Formlabs has announced a new manufacturing partnership with global sportswear brand, New Balance.
The relationship between the two Boston-based companies includes the development of footwear-specific materials, as well as printers to create products to improve athlete performance. Production will be powered by Form 2, the best-selling SLA print engine that has already stood the test of printing more than 10 million parts.
“New Balance is excited to work with fellow Boston-based Formlabs on our next evolution in 3D printing,” says Rob DeMartini New Balance President and CEO. “We have been a leader with 3D printing technology for many years, when we were the first to bring customised spike plates to our professional runners and have expanded into other sports since then. Now we look forward to taking this technology to consumers to further improve athlete performance.”
Max Lobovsky, CEO of Formlabs added: “We’re proud to work with New Balance to provide cutting-edge 3D printing technologies for large-scale domestic manufacturing. 3D printing gives companies the ability to provide higher performance, better fitting, and more personalized products. With New Balance, we are demonstrating that it can be done at scale for consumer goods.”
Continuous production using the new materials and machines within New Balance owned manufacturing facilities is expected to begin in 2018.
The Formlabs/ New Balance announcement was made at an action-packed Digital Factory manufacturing conference today (June 5th).
It followed the launch of Formlabs' first SLS 3D printing platform, Fuse 1 and an automated production system, Form Cell. Click here for more.
