Computational Couture: Printing onto Fabric

One of the things I had always wanted to try was 3D printing onto fabric.

I was discouraged to try it, but I decided as an explorer of textile techniques that I would think about the process and techniques in how it could be done, then if I felt confident enough, I would just go for it.

After feeling so unconfident with my Grasshopper skills, I tried to go back to drawing on Rhino, but looking at my research from the Computational Couture week.

Here are the stages I went through to create the design as well as the 3D printing.

 

---

Drawing in Rhino  and making the designs 3D

I wanted a much more fluid shape than that of the interlocking design I had started with from the Computational Couture assignment week.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

---

Prepping the fabric for printing

As I am interested in using waste fabric in my Final Project, I wanted to text out the connecting possibilities and using the technique of 3D printing.

I came up with the idea of using masking tape as a connector for the fabrics as well as a backing so that the fabric did not stretch or move on the glass plate.

Luckily also the masking tape it thin enough and the glass hot plate temp low enough to cause no H&S issues and also allows the heat through.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

---

Printing onto the Fabric

Here we can see the way that I set up the backed-fabric on the machine, during teh printing process and afterwards.

As you can see the prints were not 100% successful, but I believe this is a good step towards developing this concept  and gaining some initial insights before further research.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.