11. Open Source Hardware - From Fibers to Fabric¶
What the week looked like¶
Since this week didn't have a specific material list to procure, we had been in talks with our localmentors about the potential objects we would be working on. And eaverything considered, we wanted to work on making a weaving loom, since that is something that we do not have in our labs, and could be a good value addition.
We also have students interested in weaving and crochet. And every year a cohort of students led by me, visit our sibling school in Kutch, Somaiya Kala Vidya; where we learn printing & weaving techniques from the artists over a period of 5 days.
I leave for the annual trip in a fortnight i wanted to make something to show the students and the artists about our explorations at Fabri and look for way forwards in trying to collaborate with them in the near future.
Takeaways from Global Session¶
This week's session by Sara Diaz of HILO explored open source knowledge systems, revisiting and building on concepts introduced in Week 3. She talked about how open source approaches can support the free and accessible improvement and recreation of products, empowering a broader and more collaborative design process.
The aims and benefits of open source systems are multifaceted. At their core, they strive to make knowledge freely accessible, allowing anyone to recreate, modify, and enhance existing products. This openness enables people to learn from others’ experiences and innovations, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and shared learning.
Open source systems also work toward making technology accessible to all, not just a privileged few. In doing so, they promote the common good of humanity, aligning technological progress with values of equity and inclusivity. These systems contribute to building a collective repository of knowledge, where insights and discoveries are shared rather than siloed.
Ultimately, open source systems support the freedom to learn—encouraging experimentation, curiosity, and the democratization of innovation. This mindset also shaped the second part of Sara's session where she walked us through the entire journey from fibre to fabric, where she traced the transformation from raw materials through preparation, yarn production, textile construction, and finally to potential applications.
It was interesting to learn about the tools and machines involved at each stage of this process. What stood out was how innovation in digital fabrication —a principle often aligned with open source thinking; has made parts of these processes more efficient, accessible, and adaptable. The intersection of traditional techniques and modern technologies reflects the same spirit of openness and continuous improvement that underpins open source systems.
Checklist for the week¶
Personal thoughts and Ideas¶
To begin with, I have no official training in weaving. As a kid, i have seen my grandmum and mom knitting and crocheting. I did try my had at knitting when i was a kid but never really took it on.
Last year i bought 2 bamboo lamps and attempted to weave between the structure, but that personal project paused and is locked up in some cuoboard gathering dust.
On our visit to Kuctch weavers, we spend an entire day witnessing the actual process of going from fibre to thread. And it is super intense and laborious and a LOT of work. This day is usually my least favourite day on the trip since ALL of this hardwork seems to need an entire ecosystem to function and it is too inaccessible for me.
Sensing this pattern of labour intensiveness, infrastructure and time investment, i really wanted to solve this for myself. As much as i am awed by weaving, it never was something i could see myself doing.
So this week, i looked at the 2 things that could excite me.
Firstly, i wanted something small and portable, which wouldn't take up a lot of space and setup. I also realised, with a smaller loom, i could only make smaller pieces, which is IDEAL for ME, since the magnitude of time commitment drastically reduces!
Secondly, i wanted to be able to weave with materials that wern't typically woven with. Ever since the Bio-Materials module, i have been itching to find ways of experimenting with human hair. Some of the materials i imagined i should be able to weave with on my mini loom could be Human Hair, Wire, Conductive thread (could i weave my own conductive fabric!!) and Paper.
This video showed how i could convert my hair into fibre and i plan to attempt this soon enough. I have also been looking at works of Human Hair Studio by Studio Savine who have created some brilliant works from weaving & knitting human hair.
Research & Inspiration¶
I began my research, as every designer does, from Pinterest. I had scanned through all the past Fabri Alumni works and everything was so highly innovative, that as amazed as i was, i really wanted to keep the loom simple in every possible way, so as to reduce the amount of friction to weave in the first place.
My research (doom scrolling) helped me figure out the sort of outcomes that i found intersting; which were smaller beautiful patches!
During my research, i also realised that there were SOO MANY possible ways to weave, be it the technique or the loom innovation, that i found it hard to figure out which one is it that i wanted to work on.
So i did what i usually remind my students to do; to not solve this loom for eveyone, but to begin by what i wanted to learn to be able to do. And knowing my knack for all thing DIY, i knew i am up for figuring out how to make anything tactile; i decided to make a loom that could accomodate every style of weaving that i liked on Pintrest!
AS ti turns out, there was again an obvious pattern of things that i was liking; Mini Looms and Grid loom boards (which let you personalise it for any shape).
Based on these key facets of what my loom needs to be, i have come up with 2 design styles of looms, that i have thoroughly enjoyed weaving on this week.
Softwares, Tools & Materials¶
SOFTWARES:¶
- Autodesk AutoCAD
TOOLS:¶
- Laser Cutter
MATERIALS:¶
- 5mm Transparent Acryllic Sheet
- 3mm Transparent Acryllic Sheet
- 3mm Neon Transparent Acryllic Sheet (optional)
- Jute rope
Work Flow¶
Choosing the Material¶
Once i had clarity on the materials or rather fibres i was wanting to use for weaving, i had to next select the material to make the loom with.
We had options of choosing from ply, mdf, local wood and acryllic. And i wanted to work on the Laser cutter for these designs. So the winning choice was very straignforward.
Ply, MDF and local wood would have burnt edges and would require a LOT of treatment post laser cutting, hence they wern'r efficent for fast prototyping for the week. Moreover, the material thickness available in the lab were not conducive to be laser cut efficiently on the lab lasercutting machine.
The choice for acrycllic as a material was heavily functional, apart from being being aesthetic. There would be no black edges or splinters that could damage the weaving thread. And the laser cutter could easily work on upto 8mm thickness for cutting, which made this the best option moving forward.
3mm Mini Loom¶
Designing¶
I started on AutoCAD with a base dimension of a 6cm square for the mini-square loom and dimensions of 6cm by 12cm for the mini-rectangle loom.
Even though these are tiny looms to begin with, i wanted to offer different permitations and combinations within these as well. I would imagine, that if i wanted to weave the hair i shed over a week, i would have a smaller length of thread to weave with; and if i were to weave using this after a month, i would have a longer thread.
Hence having the freedom to play around with the woven piece proportions based on the length of thread i had at the moment, was a possibility i wanted to have in the design.
Along with loom frame, i also made designs for the other pieces used during weaivng, including needles, comb and bobbins.
Laser Cutting¶
It was brought to my attention, that if hair is something i wanted to weave, it would have some elasticity in comparison to say a cotton thread. Hence, considering the size and proportion of my loom, i decided to go for a 3mm Transparent Acryllic for this iteration.
However, before cutting the final pieces, i did a test cut on waste 3ply corrugated to check the feasability of the design. This was a deliberate choice, since i didn't want to create unnecesary waste from acryllic.
I made a few edits to the drawing and refined details and then composed a tightly nested design for laser cutting. The loom with all its parts could be accomodated within 18cm by 15cm approximately.
It took around 10mins to lasercut these pieces and they looked so cute, that i was swayed to cut these into a spare acrylic sheet, so i could gift it.
And this is how the pieces look, after a quick wash and air dry (just to ensure there is no soot that catches on the thread during weaving).
Weaving¶
At first I attemped an edge to egde weave on the mini-square loom using jute rope that i had lying at home. It seemed like a similar texture and thickness to what i would imagine weaving with hair thread could be. It took me a few tries to figure out how to weave and below is the timelapse of the process.
Here is a timelapse of me weaving on the Square Mini Loom
Once i got the hang of it, i also wanted to test the loom for weaving on the mid-loom edges that i had put in the design. So i tried weaving on the mini-rectangle loom, while also testing if the material could take the pulling stress (which it did).
Here is a timelapse of me weaving on the Rectangular Mini Loom
It took me about an hour to finish weaving each of these.
Woven Pieces¶
Having never completed a piece before, i didn't know how to remove the piece from the loom! I was given a great tip to use thin crochet needles to remove it and manuver the weave to one edge and tie off the other end.
This is what the woven pieces look like.
5mm Grid Loom¶
Designing¶
Even though i was designing both the looms simultaneously, i was constantly trying to figure out the differnces of use case between the two designs.
I started on AutoCAD with a base dimension of 6cm by 12cm for the grid loom. And i wanted to ensure that all possible shapes could be acoomodated within this mini grid loom. So, i laid out possibilities of circular weaving as well.
Along with loom frame, i also made designs for the other pieces used during weaivng, including vertical pins, needles, comb, bobbins and bands for various combinations of usecase.
Laser Cutting¶
This part was quite straightforward. Like the previous design, i tested the design on a 5ply corrugated first to ensure the parts worked.
I edited parts of the drawing to modify the design in places and created a tightly nested drawing. All the pieces fit in 45cm by 16cm approximately.
It took about 20mins to cut these pieces. And this is how the pieces look, after a quick wash and air dry (just to ensure there is no soot that catches on the thread during weaving).
Design Details¶
This is the resting position of the Loom..
Being a Grid Loom or a Pin Loom, the width of the warp is customisable. Knowing that i only wanted to use one material across the design, i created square hole grids (instead of the usual round hole grids) and designed for the 5mm by 5mm acryllic pins to fit exactly within the cross-section.
Inorder to make it even more customisable, the loom can be inclined at an angle to ensure more ergonomic weaving angles if needed. And designed for details to raise the loom at an angle to personalise it for comfort based weaving, while it rests on a surface.
Here is a detailed demo video of how these kit of parts work.
Learnings¶
My learnings this week were around Laser cutting acryllic, since i hadn't worked in this scale of number of pieces before.
I learnt that as important as it is to tightly nest the drawing, it is also important to understand the behaviour of the material you are working with.
As it turned out, my very tightly nested drawings with over lap edges got cut supremely quickly, however with slightly deformed edges and details. Because when you melt plastic, that does tend to happen!!
Next thing i realised was, that the sheer impact of the laser and the cutting, the tiny pieces jump and hence the presumable flat surface of acryllic aka Plastic deforms a bit and leads to NOT precise cutting when nested too close.
For the next time, i will nest my drawing tighly, but if cutting on acryllic, will leave a small tiny gap between the pieces to avoid inaccuracies.
Bill of Materials¶
| Qty | Description | Price | Vendor | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3mm Corrugated Cardboard | ₹440 | Local Vendor | For test prototype |
| 1 | 5mm Transparent Acrylic 3ft x 4ft | ₹2450 | Local Vendor | Main Design |
| 1 | 3mm Transparent Acrylic 3ft x 4ft | ₹1849 | Local Vendor | Main Design |
| 1 | 3mm Neon Green Acrylic 3ftx4ft | ₹155 per sq ft | Local Vendor | Main Design |
| 1 | Jute rope | ₹199 | Amazon] | Main Design |
Fabrication Files¶
People to thank for this week¶
Shefali: for the hot tip to use a tiny crochet needle to take the woven piece off the loom!
My TY Students: for not hating on me for having booked the only working laser cutter for all of Saturday, when they needed to finsih work for their Jury submision on Monday