Automation of lasting operation in shoe production industry

The paper describes an approach to the automation of the shoe lasting process. Lasting is considered as one of the most critical operations in shoe production automation. Our solution consists of a standard commercially available lasting machine, a vision guided last positioning machine and an industrial robot for the handling operations. The positioning device is stand alone machine. The task of the positioning device is to align the shoe upper and the shoe sole to the shoe last. The machine consists of the vision controlled linear servo axis and of pneumatic cylinders for fixing of the shoe upper to the shoe last. We have designed a special robot gripper in order to handle shoe last, aligned shoe upper and the sole. Using the proposed approaches the productivity of the lasting work cell and the reliability of the production has been increased. Additionally, the nailing of the sole on the last, which is required in the manual production, has been avoided.