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| II. - DIGITAL WEAVING MACHINE TC2 |

  • TC2 tutorial cooming soon!

  • Content:

  • I. Files preparation - softwares
  • II. Files preparation - pixels and patterns
  • III. Material preparation
  • IV. Machine set up
  • V. Fabrication
  • VI. Post-process

DESIGN & SOFTWARE

You can create your own design in any software! Mine was done in Rhino and imported to Illustrator. You just have to import it to Photoshop as .JPG or .PNG.

PHOTOSHOP

The width of TC2 machine in the TextileLab is 1 085 pixels - what means that each pixel responds to each fiber of the machine. You can also use 2 or more colors during weaving but you will have to specify which color represent real color. In this tutorial I worked only witth two colors.

  • Start with creating a new board of 1085 pixels wide and x pixels long - depending on your design and how long it will be your woven piece.
  • Place your design into the new board.
  • Make sure that your design contains only two colors - IMAGE -> MODE -> INDEX COLOR (merge). If it does not show 2 colors you can try adjust contrast or black&white parametres to delete other colors in your file.
  • Unlock the first layer with your design and select Magix Wand tool (W) - create two layers - 1. for the black color and 2. for the white. Select your white background and put it into one of the layers and then the samee step if black color.
  • Click on the layer with the white color and Add a layer style -> Pattern overlay. You will have import your own library of patterns as .pat files.
  • Select woven pattern for each layer - white for the white layer and black for the black layer. When you are ovelaying the pattern make sure that it says 100% Scale - otherwise your design will be blurry and TC2 software will not recognise it.
  • Export it fromm Photoshop as .tif and import it into TC2 software.

MATERIAL PREPARATION

TC2

  • Connect the software with the machine - CONFIGURATION -> TC2 CONFIGURATION -> SCAN -> SELECT THIS -> CONNECT - you will hear the machine roar!
  • First you have to start with TABBY what means that you will create a few rows as a beginnig of your pattern - you can use is as an offset for sewing the parts together for example.
  • Select START TABBY and create approc 2 - 2.5 cm of Tabby.
Last update: 2022-05-11