02 Secon Garment

SECOND GARMENT¶

The second garment is made of a totally different material, calf leather. In this case I decided to play with hard surface modelling in order to make some molds for leather molding.

For the 3d surface modelling part I took the Clo3d avatar as reference and imported it on Rhino, then I applied the Drape command in order to convert the mesh into a Surface and finally I applied the grasshopper definition.

Grasshopper Definition, explanation video

(top left) Grasshopper results, (top right) leather simulation redered in Clo3d, (bottom left) Grasshopper definition applied onto the body,(bottom right) final CNC mold.

Once the 3D model is finished, the next step is to prepare the file for the CNC

Setting up the file on RhinoCAM

Tools; Ball-end-mill 12 mm for Rouging and Ball-end-mill 10mm for finishing

CNC MILLING¶

Rouging and finishing process videos

Once the mold is done, we can start the leather molding process by summerging the leather on hot water for 20 second. Once hot, we need to strech the material as much as possible so it fits the cast, for this it is convenient to add screws at the edge of the mold. Then, we need to put everything inside a plastic bag and place the mold inside of the vaccum press machine and in aproximatly 24 hours the leather would be perfectly shaped.

Process

Failed attempts¶

Before we screw the material onto the mold we need to see if the leather is stiff enough, one of the main problems that I had was that the water wasn´t as hot as it should (it should be boiling) which meant that the leather was't hard wnough in order to maintain the shape of the mold.

Low cooked leather

Leather bag¶

I also tried to make a leather bag using the same technique but I was not able to get the final result that I was expecting, the main issue was that the model was not symmetrical, since I decided to split the model in two, which meant that it could not be sewn properly, the length on both sides were totally different and they were also small bumps at the edge of the moulds which made it even more complicated to be matched and sewn.

Laser Cutting¶

For the bottom part, we made a pretty basic grasshopper definition using tween curves (this tween curves were connected to some reference curves, that you could move and get all the geometry to move along) in order to laser cut them on leather.