framas, based in Pirmasens, Germany, is a technology partner to footwear brands. It develops and manufactures plastic components and molds for performance sports footwear, including football boot outsoles. In injection molding, hot plastic is injected into a steel mold and must cool before the part is released, which is often the longest step. Straight drilled channels cannot follow a complex outsole shape, and framas’ conformal channels, which follow the part contour, had already shortened cooling.
ToffeeX explored further improvement using its Seed Design feature, which starts from those existing channels and limits how far the design may change, tested at different levels of permitted variation. Topology optimization shaped the channels, separate water circuits aimed to even out temperatures, and designs were checked for metal 3D printing in tool steel. The selected design was then validated through thermal-fluid simulation against both earlier layouts under identical conditions, showing shorter cooling. Though based on simulation, not production results, the case shows how refining an already strong cooling design could shorten production cycles and make fuller use of existing machines.
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