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HIGH TECH, HIGH TOUCH, REVOLUTIONS, EVOLUTIONS
JULY/AUGUST 2012 | www.footwearbiz.com
This eliminated the need to finish these
two critical sections manually and so
produced even more accurate lasts.
Indeed, a high quality shoe needs an
accurate last so, in this sense, the
revolution in last making has also
greatly contributed to improving the
quality of shoemaking overall.
SOFTWARE
The revolution in last making was
enabled by the software tools that
were available to model the last. This
was part of a much deeper
transformation that, during those same
years, drove the footwear world fully
into the digital era. A revolution that
for the first time in the technological
history of the industry was not driven
by power (steam, electricity) or
hardware
(tools,
machines,
equipment) but one made possible by
the appearance of software programs
to design and engineer the shoe. It was
a revolution that the introduction of
these new tools into design
departments necessitated a change of
mindset and organisation that went
beyond the simple adoption of the
technology of the moment.
At the beginning of the 1980s, we
saw the first attempts to transfer to the
footwear
world
those
CAD
technologies that were then becoming
state of the art in many other
industries. It was very soon realised
that the problems of shoe design were
so specific and peculiar that standard
NC controlled lasting machine
CREDIT: CERIM
Latest generation of last milling machine
CREDIT: NEWLAST