Abstract The use of 3D printed stamps at an industrial scale for footwear and leather goods production was assessed by comparing three additive manufacturing (AM) technologies: selective laser sintering (SLS), masked stereolithography (mSLA) and fused filament fabrication (FFF). A benchmarking stamp was developed with design features of various dimensions, regularly used for applications in leather marking. The stamping process was also evaluated in terms of the duration of the stamping, number of cycles and stamp temperature. Both the stamping process and the AM technologies were assessed for two different types of leather: chrome and vegetable tanned leather, in wet and dry conditions. The results show that both SLS and mSLA allow the production of stamps with thinner design details and better definition than those produced by FFF. Design features with dimensions <0.5 mm were not possible to print by SLS, as the printer overbuilt the features to a minimum size of 0.5 mm, while the mSLA stamps present the highest level of detail, enabling the printing of features down to 0.1 mm. FFF stamps are not suitable for stamping with a high level of detail. Concerning the stamping process, the results show that vegetable tanned leather is more suitable for marking than chrome tanned leather, regardless of the type of 3D printed stamp used. The stamping process study shows that longer times of stamping (20 s), the use of wet medium and hot stamping lead to the best quality of leather marking. Overall, mSLA stamps present the best results, combining the ability to achieve higher levels of detail, stamp marking resolution and durability of stamps. © 2026 Society of Chemical Industry.
Duarte et al. (Thu,) studied this question.