Thread2Print


Introduction

Thread2Print is a project that invites us to think of knitting machine as 3D printer. If we look at how a knitting machine works, we notice that the manufacturing system is the same as 3D printer: fed with a thread, the machine produces materials, surfaces, or volumes that are revealed layer by layer. Appearing in 1976, domestic knitting machine were present in households long before 3D printers. All their potential were overlooked by the general public.Knitting machines are capable of producing any shape and complex structure, but this technique, as a craft, is often associated with grandmothers as a hobby. Indeed, it is rare to find knitting machines in digital spaces like fab-labs, even though they represent a revolution in soft digital fabrication1.

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  • 1 Industrial ceramic 3D printer
  • 2 Industrial knitting machine Shima Seiki
  • 3 3D printer PLA PRUSA Mini
  • 4 Semi-Industrial knitting machine Kniterate
  • 5 Ceramic extruder
  • 6 Brothers domestic knitting machine

-1 Inspired by the artists Varvara&Mar and their «knitic project» about the revolution of soft digital fabrication with knitting machines. * https://var-mar.info/circular-knitic/ * https://ignite.globalfundforwomen.org/gallery/knitic-revolutionizing-digital-fabrication

References

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Lectures / Books

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↓↓ WIKIPEDIA PAGES ↓↓

↓↓ PHD research ↓↓

Choose your side !

If you want to perform in soft digital fabrication through knitting technics, you may have two choices :

The first one will be to buy an expensive industrial or semi-industrial knitting machine known as Shima, Stoll or even kniterate and its high-performance. This choice has the consequence of being dependent on their expensive softwares, their own specific functionnement, because they defer on every machine. You will also take the risk of never having the full control on the machine and never reaching a deep understanding of what happens inside it.

Or you can make the second choice. Decide that using a domestic knitting machine is a way to anchor yourself in the open source ideology, be somewhere outside of the capitalist system by producing more slowly and on a smaller scale. Also, you will finally embrace a full control on the machine and the material that comes out.

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  • 1 Industrial knitting machine Shima Seiki
  • 2 Semi-Industrial knitting machine Kniterate
  • 3 Domestic knitting machine «electroknit»

The knitout file format

or a way to emancipate from privates and opaques softwares.

Let me introduce you to knitout, a file format thought as a universal knitting machine language that can represent low level knitting machine instructions. Knitout was developed by the Canergie Mellon textile lab, to simplify industrial or semi-industrial knitting langage and reclaim it, instead of passing through the learning and the use of private and opaque softwares.

Here, you will find the Carnegie Mellon Textile Lab website if you’re curious about all their very interesting projects and research !

Here, the Canergie textile lab github

Here, the Knitwork website

What about 3D ?

Autoknit program and other tools develop with .knitout

With the knitout language, they developed a bunch of tools. I discovered Autoknit, a program that translates an obj file into a knitout file. At this stage of my project, this tool was perfect to prove that knitting machines are litterally 3D printers.

Autoknit program

knitout to k.code backend program

Knitout live visualizer program

Project research page «On-demand Machine Knitting - Knitout tools

Concept

The ambition of this project is to adapt this new 3D knitting method for domestic machines, making this research open, in order to bypass the use of machines that are hardly accessible. This ambition will then involve creating a visualization of these knitted instructions that are adapted to be read by humans instead of machines.

However, in order to make this possible, I needed to experiment and appropriate this complex ecosystem first, to then be able to popularize it.

Video

↓ Story Board ↓

↓ Filming Session ↓ The |number| indicates the position in the storyboard

  • 1/ Me looking at the 3D printer (running) |02|

  • 2/ Me looking at the kniterate (running) |02|

  • 3/ Zoom on the 3D printer nozzle→moving right to left and vice versa |03|

  • 4/ Zoom on the yarn feeder (bring the yarn to the needle bed)→moving right to left and vice versa |03|

  • 5/ Shot of me in the office, looking at my computer |07|

  • 6/ Me getting to work - zoom/ change of body position/ closer to the computer/ hand on the computer mouse |08| (start chapter1) stop motion style ? maybe something fluide better

  • 7/ Me at the same position (6) getting more closer to the computer /new position /focus-interested face |12| (start chapter2) stop motion style ? again no lo sé(we'll see during the session)

  • 8/ Stop motion : position A to position B A= the office (shots 5/6/7) to B= where the Kniterate is (semi - industrial knitting machine) |15→16|

  • 9/ Shot of kniterate machine running |17| no stop motion style → accelerate the video

  • 10/ Me crossing my arms in front of my computer OR me rolling up my sleeves |19| (start the chapter3)

  • 11/ Me in front of my computer with chocked-excited face |20•21| stop motion zoom effect ?

  • 12/ same as 9/ but the machine running faster. We can reuse the same video |22|

  • 13/ Throwing the first fail on the table |23| static shot

  • 14/ Me sitting at the office position, looking at my fail (puzzled face) |24| (start the chapter 4)

  • 15/ Close view of my hand writting on the grid paper |25|

  • 16/ Zoom out from 15/ see the amount of paper |26|

  • 17/ Me (my hands) hooking the written instructions on the domestic knitting machine |27|

  • 18/ Me knitting on the domestic knitting machine→trying to understand→being tired-relaxing on my chair |28| accelerate large shot

  • 19/ Me in front of my computer with a reflective face |30| (start chapter5)

//in between shot of machine running (but reuse from 12/)

  • 20/ Throw away all my fails on the table (same shot as 13/) with stength |35|

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  • 21/ no stop motion maybe real time with real sound ? : The camera turn from 20/ to shoot me with a very mad face then following me going grab the stack of my fails + my computer to go towards the domestic knitting machine // create a break |36 →37| (start the chapter 6)

  • 22/ Me exhausted |43| (start chapter7)

//chapter8

  • 23/ Zoom on my eyes focuc OR my noze touching the computer screen

//chapter9

  • 24/ Me in front of my domestic knitting machine + computer (like a scene) smilling at the camera and when I go back to work CUT

punchline

end

credits

PDF presentation

Visuals

Little conclusion

I know that learning to use a knitting machine is much more challenging than using a 3D printer, and I believe that’s why knitting machines receive so little attention. What I really wanted to convey in this project is the role that knitting machines, and more broadly textile machines, should play in fabrication spaces. It's about providing space for a whole community that currently works from home. The idea of doing 3D knitting, although very exciting, was also a way to tap into the trend that gave rise to fab labs, with the belief that anything could be produced in 3D with 3D printers. Today, we can 3D print with almost any material, and I wanted to extend this phenomenon to knitting by building on existing research, while also opening up this trend to a textile community that has been overlooked by fab labs.

This experience also invites us to look at the human-machine interaction in a different way, where the passage of time between the file and the result produced by the machine is not immediate. I believe it is specifically this intermediate space that shapes our modes of production. By bridging the gap between the program and the machine with my body, I slowed down the process, but I also made it exist at the same time.
[By doing this, I wanted to rethink the interaction we have today with machines, which is often characterized by a dynamic of domination, and shift towards a human-machine collaboration.] - understand/read/ write machine language.

BoM: Bill of Materials

Machines/Materials Price(€)
Computer and a mouse 800
Domestic knitting machine (double-bed) 500→1200
Semi-industrial knitting machine KNITERATE (optional il you want to test the first steps) 15 000
Test coton yarns ≈ 28/2 nm dépending of the gauge of your machine 20


Softwares Price(€)
Autoknit program 0
knitout to k.code backend program 0
Knitout live visualizer program 0