Computational Couture#

Thoughts on the Use of Plastic in this Assignment#

“Even if the amount of plastic shed per load is small, measured in milligrams, it adds up. A paper in Environmental Science and Technology estimated that “a population of 100,000 people would produce approximately 1.02 kilograms of fibers each day.” That’s 793 pounds per year of individual, teeny-tiny plastic shards.”
Vox: Ocean Plastic Pollution

Reflections + Objective:#


A new revolution of design is taking place within the textile industry, computationally designed and engineered garments. The necessity of this movement comes from a need to innovate the way in which we look at textiles which has been stagnant for almost a century. 3D printing and additive manufaturing is giving designers the freedom to manipulate material in a way that is not achievable through conventional means. With additive design we designers can be very specific about parameters and balance the total amount of resources we use for consumption ideally producing zero waste.
There is an imminent need to start thinging about how to design “clean” garments. Custom made to the parameters and measures of the consumer, possibly available for individual download and construction, 3D printing with biocomposites, creating and embedding smart textiles.
To understand how to integrate these processes of computational manipulation I will:

  • Explore the potential of grasshopper and various plugins
  • Create textile textured prints with iterations on grasshopper
  • Create a chainmail structure focusing on how best to link individual geometries
  • Use Cura and Makerbot to 3D print samples

Research:#


Reshape: IN(3D)USTRY
Noumena Wearable
Guppy Friend: Laundry Bagfor Micropullutants
Precious Plastics

Techiques + Softwares#

Grasshopper + Plugins:#

Grasshopper is an add-on plugin for Rhino, in most recent versions of Rhino your sofware will come with grasshopper already installed. There are many plugins for grasshopper, you may download them and move them into your special folders for gasshopper so that you may use them.
Food4Rhino


Here are a few video tutorials I followed to get me set up with grasshopper and to create a voronoi and image texture sample for 3D printing.

Importing plugins for Grasshopper


Voronoi Cells


Image Sampler: Image to texture


The following are links and videos of additional textural techniques I’d like to experiment with:


3D pringitng with biocomposites
3D printed “knitting”
Chainmail array on multiple surfaces
Branching texture with Anemone Note: I tried this with no success, this plugin did not load into my grasshopper software
Paneling tools - Voronoi on random surface
Iris van Herpen dres: Fabricademy

Voronoi:#





Image to mesh:#

I first used a knit voronoi pattern image but this was too noisy, finally I chose a floral kaleidoscope pattern which was better rendered.





Files:#

Voronoi#


Voronoi: Rhino
Voronoi: Grasshopper

Flower Extrusion from Image#


Image Sampler: Rhino
Image Sampler: Grasshopper

3D Printing:#

  • Cura and Makerbot softwares for their corresponding 3D printers
  • Make sure your STL exported files form RHINO are a solid and there are no mesh or open polysurfaces before exporting
  • You can use some support material if your structure is not fully solid which you can take off or disolve later
  • Choose your plastic filament (Filaflex, biodegradable PLA)
  • If you are printing on fabric do some tests to see how it the filament sticks to your fabric
  • Pin or clip or double sided tape your fabric down to the printer bed
  • Heat up the bed platform for better adhesion between the fabric and filaments
  • Check your knit (ex. lycra or other mesh bi-directional stretch material) to be able to control the amount of stretch your pattern will have
  • If you are stretching your fabric you have to take into account the shrinkage of your fabric which will cause very interesting ondulations on your fabric, which in itself will create textile 3D behaviour
  • The printing process can a long time depending on the fill and the size of your texture



Eurocat 3D Workshop#

3D Printing on Textile Surfaces#


Image Manipulation Using Photoshop and Cura#




Files#


Lace Collar 3D Zip File

Experiments with Prusa#

Textile + 3D Printed Magnetic (Iron) Filament from Catherine Euale on Vimeo.


Results#


You can see these and download them all on Open Source Circular Fashion

Files#


All files are downloadable through Sketchfab



Note: When printing this quick prototype I tried sinking the base in cura to print only a think extruded surface. I then chose to cut the base on solidworks to my desired extrusion level and the result was much better.

Note** In the spirit of not wasting materials I did not try the following files but I offer them for whomever wishes to see the results on fabric or multipy them to create a chain or mesh textile structure. They could also be printed for use as a stamp or for use on a roller stamp for making prints on fabrics.




Catherine.Euale @ Fabricademy 2018 - 2019 ☮

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