Week 7: Textile Scaffold

Status: Documented

30 Oct, 2018

This week we will use textiles and fibers to create a textile scaffold or use textile as formwork for their structures.


Objectives | Tasks at hand


For this week, I will be making an alien helmet as well as use crystallisation as a process for hardening the shape of my 4D form from last week.

EXTRA: Below shown is a video from my Flexible Composite assignment | Fab Academy 2017

Textile Scaffold is an interesting process to transform textiles into a shape without sewing as well as use it as a means for generating design



Reffered Links



Development Timeline


  • 1. Testing

    This week started by testing different materials for crystallisation. I took two materials for crystallisation where I dipped medical non woven material in Alum & water mixture and PLA filament in boric acid. The first one with alum was a successful crystalisation but boric acid did not work. Tip for alum crystalisation is to keep pouring pieces of alum till it stops dissolving in boiling water.

  • 2. Preparation for Crystallisation

    After testing crystalisation above, I took my epaulette piece (just to remind this lycra with TPU 3d printing) and dipped in a box by hanging it above the ground so that it doesnt touches the ground of the box and crystals grow all over rather collecting in the end. I added indigo for blue colour.

  • 3. Crystallisation on TPU

    Now this was a surprising element, that crystals not only grew on Lycra but totally covered TPU material. It looked beautiful and perfect keeping in mind that was making Epaulette which is supposed to be shiny, heavy and stiff. Oh yeah, this helped my 4 D design to take its permanent shape during crystalisation.The piece you see on the left is my first Epaulette.

  • 4. Crystallisation Trial on PLA

    Then I basically tested crystalisation with my other piece and you can clearly see how again lycra has small pieces of crystals grown over it. Not only this it actually melted a bit of PLA and folded my piece into a shape. This shape didnt exist before crystalisation.

  • 5. Output on PLA

    Here you can see that PLA didnt had crystals on it rather a bunch of crystals clustered together on Lycra and PLA together. But crystallisation altered the shape of the Piece. It can also be due to the position I kept in box for crystalisation. For example, in PLA i kept it flat submerged in alum mixture. Both TPU and PLA were dipped in alum overnight

  • 6. Composite: Textile Formwork

    After crystalisation, I wanted to make a turban or an interesting helmet, So I decided to use my Mannequinn as my mold. You can check Nishtha's documentation on how did she make my mannequinn using Laser cutting. I started by packing the head with vaccum bag and then wrapped it evenly with woolen thread through mixture of an adesive and water, here I used Fevicol as an adhesive. This was not to paste my wool but to hold them together during the process. After this, I used Araldite epoxy resin mixed Resin and hardener. To remove bubbles, I used vaccum chamber. After this I spread a layer of resin over woolen threads ad vaccum pressed it till I saw the clear layer of resin. This was Kept overnight.

  • 7. Final Product

    Next morning, Piece came out really nice where after removing the vaccum bags I got a very soft and comfortable interior and shiny and flat outermost layer. Then I used lights to play with effect.

    • Tips and Tricks


    Info Panel

    Before Laser cutting or Vinyl cutting a Fabric, its very important to make sure, there are as less of creases as possible on the fabric. We want the fabric stretched upto a reasonable amount to lay it flat.

    Warning Notes

    A soft fabric is harder to circular fit. Treating it with starch to make it hard and then joining the modules to be washed post that is an effective time saving technque for such inhouse small-scale projects.

    Danger Panel

    Fabric is the easiest media after cardboard and vinyl/sheets to catch fire if the laser is : 1) Out of Focus; 2) Speed is too slow; 3) Power is too high; 4) Fabric is not flat.
    Some fabrics (Course and dry) are prone to catch fire. Always stay alert Laser cutting.

    Success Panel

    The Success of Laser cutting on fabric is dependent on three factors: 1) Honeycomb bed and effective exhaust; 2) A longer focal length of the lens for more creased fabrics; 3) An effective power : speed ratio

    F.A.Q.

    I usually ask the Global team or myself questions relevant to the week's task.I plan to use this section to help me document for our lab's next batch of students important questions and their answers discussed during Global review/Recitation.

    Q1) Where is the 3d Model?

    Since a flat design needs to be printed on a fabric to get its 3d shape in 4d printing-the model is a flat model and is not the same shape as the final piece.
    2. As for the mould, since we wanted to make a low cst mould, you will notice the digital bodies week was used as our base model from cardboard over which a vacuum seal and thereafter the composites were vacuum pressed. Its a valid technique of composites used in quite a few industries that compress using vacuum instead of physical compression.

    Q2) What techniques were used?

    Crystallisation, 4d Printing over stretched fabric and composites using resing were three seperate assignments carried out overlaid over each other to study different effects.

    Download Section

    Print Setting File

    This Simplify3d Gcode file contains all the required printing settings.

    STL File

    The STL that was printed over stretched Fabric