The economy was given as the reason some exhibitors did not return this year, and the same reason was given for the decline in attendance. Having said all that, most exhibitors do believe that they had a successful event and saw most of their customers and even a few potential customers.

No official attendance figures were given by the show’s management, but whatever it was not far off from last year. As always, this show is geared for the footwear and tanning industries in Mexico, Central and South America, with some good interest from the U.S. and Canada. The machines shown here were in the low end of the price bracket, and needed more labor to operate them than the sophisticated machine shown at Simac.

For example, the Italian machinery makers such as The Main Group, Ottogalli, and Gesta, along with Desma from Germany, were showing some impressive injection moulding machines featuring robot spraying of the moulds as well as roughing, automatic opening and closing of the moulds and fewer personnel around the machines.

Other firms such as Tien Kang and Famex were producing products using manually operated machines that were unpolished and had no chrome, bells or whistles.

Other areas such as computer designing and sample cutters were of high tech quality because if they weren’t, they would be ineffective in today’s markets.

Perhaps the most unusual machine shown was a machine by Kyang Yhe of Taiwan. It was a machine for applying tips to shoe laces and cutting the laces to the desired length. While this offered just enough laces to meet a specific order, it meant making or buying laces of various colours and weaves to meet other orders, thus inventorying a variety of materials.

There were five computer design systems being shown, but only two offered any new technology: Crispin Dynamics, and Lectra Systemes. The Crispin system permits the designer to work in 3D switch to 2D for engineering and back again to 3D, on the same screen. Whatever the designer did in 3D to the last on one side automatically appeared on the opposite side. The last could be rotated in any and all directions so that the designer could see the various effects. Changes could me made on one side if a different line was needed without affecting the other side. As parts were designed, they could be shown in different colours or materials taken from one of the several libraries for soling materials, heels and materials. The system was also capable of allowing for various thicknesses of materials and soles.  This system featured four CAD Suite programs, engineering, last making, shoe designing and shoe costing.

In the injection moulding area, Desma was showing the largest machine, a 12 station rotary machine for direct soling of one or two layer polyurethane soles. The machine featured a new mixing and volume metering units to produce quality soles. All mould stations and injection units have their own intelligence and can be used in several different ways, making the machine quite flexible in what it can produce.

The machine uses the DEScan 2000 modular control system to find solutions to all conceivable production problems, offering great flexibility.

The mixing head can handle up to four colours with direct feed to the mixing chamber. The machine can produce direct soling of one and two–layer soles in one turn of the table; direct soling with two different densities; and two-layer direct soling with different midsoles. The main Group was featuring its Ross machine, a static unit for the production of multi-colour soles and soles with inserts in compact and expanded thermoplastic materials.

The Ross is described as a user-friendly machine that offers fast mould changing to maintain production levels while offering a variety of products. The standard machine comes with a two position rotary head (three position head an option) that offers steady production, which varies depending upon the number of colours used. This type of machine is usually set up as a bank of machines with the screw or injection head traveling behind the machines and injecting the soling material from the rear.

Ottogalli Businaro was showing its Universal 2SS-4-220-TT static machine for the injection of unit soles in one, two or three colours. This machine can be used to inject a variety of materials from soft materials for comfort shoes to rigid materials for soccer soles. These machines offer easy mould changing. They are operated in a line so that the injector heads can move along behind the machines to injects the soling materials.

Famex, perhaps the only producer of injection moulding machines in Mexico, was showing an updated version of the machine it introduced at the last Anpic. It was an eight station machine that could produce up to 200 single colour flash-free unit soles in an hour. This machine requires manual labour to open and close the moulds. It has been upgraded with a new key pad to control the timing and injection shot and a new cooling system. It takes three minutes to change from one colour to another or to change the moulds.

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