Textile as Scaffold
📅This week started on Tuesday 16th with the lecture notes from Anastasia Pistofidou who showed us different applications in the industry using technical textiles. How? Using textiles for composites, polymerization, solidification, fabric formwork, crystallization, composites and biocomposites and/or agglomerates.
▪ What I made?
🗹 Make samples with crystallization
🗹 Make samples with wood-textile
🗹 Make samples with leather molding
🗹 Document the process from CAD to CAM
🗹 Upload your 3D model
▪ Assignment
Crystals are solid materials that have an orderly repeting internal estructure or pattern and crystallization is the
formation of a crystalline solide from a solution
Needed materials:
▪ Crystal powder
▪ Tap water
▪ Filter paper (or a fabric to filter the solution)
▪ Clean jars
▪ Stainless steel pots
You can add food coloring or flavoring to the solution if you want. Also you need
patience, some crystals take longer than others to be crystalized
🟣 General steps:
- Prepare al the needed materials and prepare the structures that can be made of fabrics. Fix the structure inside the container in such a way that it does not touch the bottom or the sides of the container.
- Boil the water
- Mix the crystal powder + water
- Stir until the powder is fully dissolved
- Filter the obtained solution into the jar
- Wait...
- Remove the structure and wash it. Then apply some nail polish all over the piece.
✔️ Useful tips:
- Don't move the object (structure) inside the solution. Neither move the solution! wait the time required until moving it
- Wash the crystals after they've grown
- Put nail polish to the crystals so that they don't disolve anymore
- Pass white glue + powder on your structure before dipping it into the solution, this helps that the crystallization happens over the structure
- Use a clean container
- You should cover your jar with something, because the solution can get some impurities from the air
| Borax amount | Water amount | Difficulty | Crystallization Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 tbs | 1 cup (very hot) | easy | Overnight |
Mostly I had small jars which I could use, so many of my samples are small and for this reason I decided not to saturate my solution to avoid getting very big crystals. I tried with different structures and textiles but for each one I followed the same steps that I described before. The temperature of the water helps to control the concentration of the solution. You should boil the water previously but then use it hot while you add the powder, otherwise the powder won't disolve.
▪ Final results
⬇️ For the next cases I used bigger structures. I'm pretty happy with the first result below, I used some of the modules i made in week 3 and soaked them in the solution.
⬇️ This example is also nice because the material I'm using is really helpful. The glue, at the beginning, adhered very well to the structure and that allowed that more crystals were concentrated on it.
I think the crystallization, in all cases, was well performed because the crystals are not foggy. Many crystals were left at the bottom of the jars, fortunately these can be used again with the same or new structures.
For this last example I heated the solution from all the previous jars and stir the crystals. I put the solution in the biggest jar and used the laser cut example from Betiana Pavón. This time the crystals are really big because the water was more saturated.
Useful links:
New Grasshopper+plugin
As always I like to explore the different 3d softwares and programs and also new plugins! For this week I installed crystallon which is a crystal growth generative plugin and it creates lattices all over the mesh or over a geometry. It was kind of difficult to understand each component at first, I found it more difficult mainly because when you change the parameters it is not very visible the modifications that are being made, I mean you can see that something has changed but not exactly what and how because everything appears like a wireframe (even if you are using the rendered view). But then, working on more examples and with the guide it's really interesting what you find and you can understand more the utility of the lattice components. Here are some random things that I made while I was exploring the components.
I was inspired by Elisa Strozyk
I cut a piece of balsa wood of 1 mm thickness, and glued the cut pieces on the tulle fabric. I wanted to give some flexibility and stiffness to the fabric, and was also trying to get a result that was slightly transparent and contrasted. I glued each piece using the wood base as a template. In the near future I want to try to get the same result but gluing the wood to the fabric first and then finding the ideal parameters to cut the wood pattern without cutting the fabric.
For wood+textile you can explore with different patterns but always try to use a thin and light wood like balsa or any other wood with only 1mm of thickness (or less)
Vacuum forming is the simplified version of thermoforming but here you are not using heat, you re using a composite (glue or resin). We need a vacuum pump that is going to take out the air and a vacuum bag or vacuum box that is actually sealing everything.
Important glosary:
| Bleeder | Breather | Release Fabric | Perforated Release Film |
|---|---|---|---|
| A nonstructural layer of material used in the manufacturing of composite parts to allow the escape of excess gas and resin during cure. The bleeder material is removed after the curing process is completed and the excess resin taken with it | A loosely woven or nonwoven material that acts as a continuous vacuum path over a part but does not come in contact with the resin | A sacrificial nylon, polyester or non-porous Teflon ply that is placed over the outer plies of a laminate during lay-up. When the resin has cured the peel ply is removed. The results are a smooth surface that is easily prepared for subsequent bonding or painting | A solid release film that has been perforated with a uniform hole pattern comprised of usually 0.015” or 0.045”. Hole spacing ranges from 0.25” to 8” spacing. The effect is to restrict the amount of resin bleed that is able to pass through the film. |
Needed materials:
▪ Leather
▪ Mould made of wood, plastic or a composite
▪ Cotton canvas as a bleeder fabric
▪ Tool fabric as a breather. The breather is working as an sponge or pillow that will suck the excess of resin
▪ Clamps
▪ Wood glue or resin
▪ Vaseline or oil
Optional: You can also use a perforated plastic sheet with tiny holes that allows the resin to pass through the breather material.
Using a laser cut mould
Before going into the CNC mould I wanted to make some test with another easy mould made with some layer of cut MDF wood of 5 mm of thickness. I made the model on Rhino and I baked the final object and exported it to .stl. Then I imported the file to the Slice Fusion and used the slices technique in order to get the .dxf files that are ready to cut. I placed the vector trying to optimice the material space and then I cut it.
I glued one layer over the other with white glue and finally I sanded all the edges to eliminate as much as possible those kind of steps that form when the layers are glued together. So, this is the mould I'm using for the vacuum forming. I put oil all over the piece to make it waterproof. For MDF wood is necessary to barnish it before doing any try.
The leather I'm using is 1.5 mm thickness and I let it soak in warm water for 4 hours before massaging it. I massaged it for approx. 30 minutes and while doing so I used hot water. The leather cannot be really thin, if you’re using only 1 layer it should be 1.5 mm of thickness or instead you should glue at least 4 layers of a thin leather but that's not recommended.
I soaked the leather in water for 4 hours (I think it was very few hours) and before starting to massage I soaked the leather for 2 minutes in hot water. I also made quickly some frames with the shape of the star to hold it firmly before placing it in the bag.
- Soak the leather in water. Better in cold water and then a few minutes in hot water
- Preapre the bases and the frames
- Prepare the fabrics needed inside the vacuum bag
- Start massaging the leather with hot water
- Add some glue all over the surface of the leather and let it dry for a while
- Fix the frame over the leather
- Place all inside the vacuum bag, including the fabrics
- Start vacuuming
- Take the mold out of the bag and look at the result
After several vacuumings I removed the leather and it did not look bad. However, I'm not super pleased with this result, it has very little definition, I mean, you can appreciate the form of the star on the leather but the finishes are not the best and the glue dried but left the leather very ugly. When I removed the leather from the form, it was still too malleable and lost its shape immediately. I let the leather dry a little longer but there was no sunshine that day and I didn't have any heating device that could allow me to dry the leather a little bit.
So, I cleaned the leather with some water and made another try. After cleaning the leather, I massaged it over the form, which made it difficult for the glue to dry. Then, I vacuumed it 15 times before removing the piece. This result is much better than the last one but I still feel that it is not so defined, the leather behaves stiff in some places and does not allow to adopt the shape of the star. I even think that the mold is not ideal for this technique. By this point, I had made up my mind to leave it like that and see what happens for the next day, so I decided to put the whole project in the bag and leave it overnight held in place with the wooden frame and clamps, hoping that this would help the leather to set.
📓 Notes
- a heat gun may be useful to dry the glue that's on the leather. The glue or the composite should not stuck to the piece and neither damage the final result
- to get the final result (almost) I vacuum it 15 times, making some breaks and trying to massage the bag in each break
- Perhaps I should have massaged the leather more before placing it in the bag
- You can make some little holes on the mould for helping the air Flow
When I came back the next day, the leather looked more stable on the form. Also those wrinkles from the central part dissapeared. I remove the leather and it was a relief to see that this time the leather had dried completely and did not lose the star shape after removing it. I took a couple of photos of the result and then cut the leather following the edges of the shape so I could place it on my body to take other photos.
List of files 📁
Useful works from other alumins:
▪ Week's outcomes and learning 📌▪
This week was full of experimentation, I was interested in many of the techniques but I didn't have all the time to try them all. I'm pretty happy with the crystals results that were easy to follow and to get. I think that crystallization technique is really interesting for making jewerly or any ornaments. For this technique is not really necessary to follow a recipe because you can saturate the solution and see how it works and also by reusing the solution you're not following any kind of particulary recipe.
About the leather moulding: it was kind hard to do it alone at home, I didn't know if I had to massage it for long time or not, I had lots of doubts but I follow some steps from other alumnis and I tried to figure it by myself. Finally I got a quite acceptable result, I wish it had looked much better but I'll give it another try. In order to improve this technique I built a vacuum box at week 10, there I used different process like CNC milling, laser cutting and soldering.
Other thougths 💭
What's it? is like making an origami structure with the CNC machine and using the angles of the cutting tool. As you can see on this link there's lot of potential with the wood, I mean it's not only beautiful, it also has lot of structural capabilities.
Inspiring videos: ▪ wood-skin 01