For Qiaodan, printing in-house works out being around 40% cheaper per part.
Qiaodan regularly print 6 models at a time in their SLA450,
further speeding up the process.
Keeping the whole process under one roof also means Qiaodan have absolute control over quality.
As for quality and accuracy, the Qiaodan technicians report very little difference between the two methods.
Qiaodan is one of China's most popular sports
shoe brands with annual sales of over 4 billion yuan.
It's hard to overstate how important this level of time saving is to a manufacturer like Qiaodan.
Another crucial advantage of 3D printing for Qiaodan is that they can keep the entire design process in-house.
Although this is a significant one-off expense,
in the long-run there's no question that it has been worth it for Qiaodan.
Like all footwear brands, Qiaodan needs to constantly develop new products
and designs to stay fresh in a highly competitive market.
Qiaodan's technicians report that they used to allow fully
15 days for this process, and 8 days would be the best-case scenario.