For the launch of its first LightSpray™ plant in Zurich, On partnered with ABB Robotics—a Swiss company renowned for its leadership in industrial automation. ABB developed a robotic arm specifically for this project, designed to fabricate the uppers of On’s footwear. While the exact model hasn’t been disclosed, it’s likely a six- or seven-axis robot, configured for the precise deposition of thermoplastic filament onto rotating molds. These are similar to ABB’s robots used in painting or adhesive applications, known for their precision and repeatability.
The LightSpray™ robot operates with exceptional ingenuity. It spirals a single continuous strand of TPU around a fixed last, creating the shoe’s upper in one seamless motion—no stitching, no glue. Each unit consumes approximately 1.5 kilometers of filament per pair of shoes, applied with millimetric accuracy to thermally fuse the material layer by layer. Thanks to ABB’s expertise, standard coating and painting technologies were reimagined to suit this unique footwear process.
Programming is carried out offline using ABB’s RobotStudio, a powerful simulation platform that allows engineers to fine-tune trajectories and parameters before deployment. Advanced technologies, including ForceControl and TrueView vision systems, help ensure uniform filament flow, consistent proximity to the mold, and flawless spiral paths—all critical for quality and precision.
The Zurich facility houses four robotic units working in parallel, with the capacity to produce up to 350,000 pairs annually. As Caspar Coppetti from On remarked, “a single robot replaces the work of up to 300 people”—an illustration of just how transformative automation can be when compared to traditional manual labor.
This fourth-generation setup is only the beginning. On plans to evolve toward even more advanced generations—six or seven—scaling global production while building on the same robotic foundation.
The real innovation here isn’t just in the robot model, but in how ABB’s industrial engineering has been adapted to an entirely new purpose: printing shoes. What once served painting lines is now crafting footwear uppers with breathtaking precision, transforming a global textile process into a cleaner, faster, more localized operation.
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