Technological Innovation Helps the Development of Footwear Industry

The shoe industry is a business card of Wenling. From roasting in coal stoves to computer operation, the shoemaking technology achieves gorgeous transformation. It takes half of the injected shoes to women shoes, children's shoes and sports shoes to fully bloom, from “waring shoes” to travel to the European Union. , the United States, Africa ... ... Wenling shoe industry has undergone tremendous changes.

Green Apple Sporting Goods Co., Ltd. Chairman Chen Guangan:

The revolution in shoemaking technology began with machine changes. From manual operation to machine operation, to today's digital production, it can be said that higher shoemaking technology has now been mastered by most Wenling companies. Now Wenling shoe companies don't have shoes that are inferior to those of Guangzhou and Jinjiang.

Handcrafted low efficiency and poor quality

As the chairman of ZheJiang Apple Sporting Goods Co., Ltd., Chen Guangan has been dealing with shoes since childhood.

“My father can be said to be the earliest batch of shoes in Wenling.” Chen Guang’an said that although the size of the shoe factory was not large at the time, “the sparrow was small and well-organized,” Chen Guangan was familiar with the family at a young age. Each type of shoe company.

Speaking of the past of shoes, Chen Guang'an still remembered. “Before 2000, Wenling’s footwear industry was booming, but the technology was not very good. In order for the upper and sole to be better bonded together, it needed to go through a warming process. In the process, the glued upper and sole softened. However, the tool used for warming was not the current oven but the coal briquette.” Chen Guangan said that the coal briquettes had a two-tiered iron shelf, first Lay out the soles of the shoes, place the upper on the second floor, and two people are responsible for a coal briquette stove. One brush the glue and one person glues the upper and the sole. “At that time, in the 50-meter-long factory building, one saw the past. More than 20 coal briquettes were arranged in a row and burned with coal. Like the whole room, the workers had to work bare-armed.”

“However, because the temperature of the coal ball furnace is not stable, the softness of the shoe upper is also unstable, and the adhesive can only rely on the feeling of the workers. Not only that, unlike the lines that need to be crossed now, the glue is also felt At the time, due to equipment limitations, shoemaking can only be produced by hand one by one, unlike the current use of assembly line production.”

"Technical instability, shoes easy to degumming, Wenling shoes were evident at the time." Chen Guangan said, "And before 2000, many Wenling shoe soles through the collection of waste oil, waste soles with an injection molding machine into a sticky Colloidal, produced by the second use. Such soles are hard, smelly, non-slip, and easy to break. Wenling's shoes are called 'Women's shoes', and the sole material is also very important."

Green apple molding line length Li Zhongfeng:

Filtered ads

Compared with the previous production process, since the introduction of the assembly line, the production process and materials of Wenling Shoes have been continuously innovated, both in terms of product quality and production efficiency.

Technological innovation saves time and effort

Li Zhongfeng, 33, is the molding line leader in Green Apple Sporting Goods Co., Ltd. When he began to work in the footwear industry, heating of coal stoves basically became a thing of the past.

Around 2003, a bake lamp, commonly known as "Little Sun," replaced the coal stove, and afterwards, a constant temperature oven appeared, allowing the efficiency of this process to take a higher level.

After 2005, a simple assembly line emerged in shoe-making companies, eliminating the need to manually produce shoes one by one, saving a lot of time. Today, the mature technology line has become the main production force of major shoe companies.

“For taking this step, the process of brushing, gluing, squeezing, pressing, backing, scribing, softening, and so on is almost all done on the assembly line. In addition to a few processes, manual operations are required. Most of the computers can be operated using computers," said Li Zhongfeng. “A good computer program is designed to let the computer control the operation of the assembly line, which not only improves production efficiency but also improves product quality.”

“In addition to being more advanced in technology, the shoemaking process in recent years has also become more rigorous. In order to increase the durability of the shoes, the degree of slip resistance, the viscosity of the upper and the sole, etc., the previous situation where only one brush was applied and the oven was changed once has changed. "Li Zhongfeng said that the entire process is down, the glue must be brushed twice, and the oven must be used four times.

Not only that, the previous shoe upper was mostly printed, but nowadays, point drilling, electric embroidery and hemming are all used. The shoe soles that were previously used twice have been replaced by materials such as pvc, tpr, eva, pu, and rubber, which are lighter or cheaper or non-skid today.

The past sewing machines were all household sewing machines, often with skipping stitches, and even with needles that could not be stitched due to the thick upper material. Nowadays, computer cars made with industrial sewing machines combined with digital technology can not only increase output by 30% to 50%, but also, on a manual basis, a computer car can usually top the workload of 6 to 10 people. In addition, the current shoe-making enterprises generally use electronic speed control motors, servo motors, etc. to replace the traditional industrial sewing machine clutch motors, or frequency conversion transformation of the main energy-consuming equipment, through the contrast test, saving more than 30%.