10. Textile Scaffold

References and Inspiration

Composite Materials

One Cup of Coffee — Shannon Sykes

Image Credit: Jesal Mehta

I met Shannon Sykes at Fab23 Bhutan where she was holding a workshop, and was very impressed by her work converting coffee grounds into a molded cup, especially since it was successful at being water- and heat-resistant long enough to be usable. She was kind enough to share her resources and recipes, and also runs a Discord server called One Cup of Coffee, building a community around this work.

In fact, she was probably one of the first Fabricademy alumni I met, sparking the interest that eventually led me to be here.

Image Credit: Jesal Mehta

KOFI — Coffee Husks to Paper

Image Credit: Fabricademy | Anastasia Pistofidou

Along similar lines, KOFI was introduced during the session, where coffee husks are used to make paper.

From coffee waste to paper — the journey of KOFI

View on Instagram: @kofi.matters

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Image Credit: Fabricademy | Anastasia Pistofidou

These projects were interesting as well !

Fabric Formwork

At MIT-ID, my design alma mater, our Director, Dhimant Panchal, or DP as we all fondly call him, was exploring the connection of Aesthetics and Gravity.

He created a series of these catenary forms by hardening fabric hung on a welded frame and casting using the surface created.

Image Credit: Jesal Mehta

Image Credit: Fabricademy | Anastasia Pistofidou

I loved Anastasia's students' work as well as the work of Frederick Kiesler, shown during the session, using fabric and creating tensile forms.

I have long admired forms generated by smooth stretching of fabric, but did NOT want to use resin to solidify them.

Image Credit: Fabricademy | Anastasia Pistofidou

Heinz Isler's Ice Pavilion is another project that uses ice to harden the fabric, which is brilliant if you are in the right climatic conditions.

Crystallisation

Image Credit: Fabricademy | Anastasia Pistofidou

Growing up, growing crystals was a mighty fascination, but I was limited to playing with salt or sugar. And in the Mumbai humidity, those don't last too long ! But one of the things I had tried was exactly this, growing crystals on LEDs and lighting them up !

Wood and Textile

Elisa Strozyk

Image Credit: Fabricademy | Anastasia Pistofidou

Diego Vencato

Image Credit: Fabricademy | Anastasia Pistofidou

Antonia Doenitz

Image Credit: Fabricademy | Anastasia Pistofidou

Studio DoubleO

Image Credit: Fabricademy | Anastasia Pistofidou

Each of these, I find lovely and brilliant. Elisa Strozyk and Diego Vencato's work opens up so many possibilities in my mind.

Antonia Doenitz takes it even further - this is an exploration I have been grasping towards somewhat unconsciously, wanting to do this with PCBs, with 3D printing on fabric, and now with wood as well.

DoubleO studio's work, while introduced for Fabric formwork, I find a great direction to explore wood composites as well.

Ideation

Almost all of the 7 areas this week fascinate me, so my head was exploding with ideas, and variants to try, variables to test. I boiled them down to about 15 things to do, of which then I selected a few to actually execute.

Composite Materials

I have been making paper since childhood - not regularly, but often enough. So while this was appealing, I wanted to do something more and different.

During the biomaterials week as well, I had experimented with different filler materials and had thus dabbled in composites there as well.

Within paper making, I wanted to try

• Rice Husk | Onion skin | Bagasse cellulose | Turmeric pulp as fibres - I have these materials on hand from BioChrome leftovers, or other access
• Beyond White glue, using starches, gum arabic and natural binders

For volumetric composites (as opposed to sheets of paper),

• Gelatin recipes that I had been successful with during Biomaterials - BioResin and BioSilicone
• With more filler variants like
• Rice husk powder
• Cat hair
• Steel wool
• Coal powder
• Cellulose

I wanted to cast these combinations in 3D printed or ready molds to create objects.

I also want to explore 3D printed molds for paper pulp casting.

My question is : If no shell layers are printed and the infill is fine enough to support the wet material, can paper pulp be cast in 3D printed molds, such that the infill acts like a capillary material to absorb/wick away the water from the pulp, analogous to what plaster molds do for liquid clay in the slip casting process ?

Fabric Formwork

I conduct a class exercise for my students where we use pipe frames and stocking fabric to create tensile forms by pulling at the fabric using hooks and threads.

Wanting to preserve these forms, I want to explore hardening the fabric enough that it can stand on it's own, unattached to the frame and unhooked from the threads. White glue is the simplest, but I'd like to explore what else can be used.

Given the inspiration from the session, I also want to cast a heavier material - PoP or concrete - in the tensile form created by the scaffolding. This won't work on a 3D frame, but a 2D frame with a combination of fabric, threads and wires would work. The frame could be pipes in a rectangle, or more complex shapes created by 3D printing a frame onto the stretchy fabric.

Wood and Textile

There is a whole basket of patterns waiting to be explored here. The work seen so far is mainly triangular facets, but other tesselations and tilings, platonic, archimedean and beyond, can be tried.

Pitch, spacing, thickness, etc are all variables to experiment with to see their effect on the resulting curvature, bendability and forms that emerge.

The principle can also be extended to develop objects or swatches that turn into developable, bi-curved, or complex surfaces.

Generative patterns using Processing and algorithms like Browninan deposition, Reaction-Diffusion, or even simple things like Subdivisions and Simplex Noise to create the individual facets would also be interesting.

All of this gets added dimensions if the fabric is stretchable instead of just pliable.

Crystallisation

I definitely want to try crystallization on LEDs. Alongwith that though, I want to try crystallisation on threads, knots made of cord, crocheted objects, and fabric or mesh surfaces, both flat or 3D.

Apart from growing crystals over a material, I want to experiment with seeding crystals.

A specific thing I want to try is to grow small seed crystals on a thread, wrap that thread on a thicker cord, and then soak it to grow crystals further - I am hoping the seed crystals grow bigger resulting in a helix of large crystals wound around a cord.

Similarly, I have a 3D printed dinosaur, and I'll be gluing a powder of my crystal material in specific areas to be seeds for further crystal growth. Hopefully I create a spiky, scaly dinosaur or dragon !

Crystalline materials :

• Alum, since I already have on hand from the biochrome work
• Epsom Salt (Magnesium Sulphate)
• Borax

Wood and Textile

Tools

Materials

• 3mm plywood
• Masking tape

Tools

• Lasercutter
• Boxcutter

Software

• CorelDraw | Inkscape
• Grasshopper
• RDWorks

Process

I initially sketched out a few patterns, seen in the Ideation section above. Then I decided to work directly on software for all the variations once I had a few directions defined.

I also realised with the sheer volume of possibilities that existed, that whether within this week or later, but I wanted to create a swatch book and repository of the variations that could be added in the future.

Drawings

I first started by manually doing some vector drawings, but quickly decided that it would be far easier and faster to setup Grasshopper scripts and generate variations using that.

Tessellating Pieces

Voronoi and Delaunay configurations

Linear spacing

Diamond patterns

Phyllotaxis and Voronoi

I then baked the Grasshopper geometry into Rhino layers, and exported it as DXF files for lasercutting. I did a round of cleanups, trimming extended lines, framing and layouts in vector software.

The circular shapes were done manually in vector software.
The conical waves were created using a variant of the Linear/Diamond pattern GH script and replicated in vector software.
Wherever there were converging lines, those lines/areas were trimmed off to prevent burning from repeated laser exposure.

Laser cutting

Material : 3mm plywood
Power : 60-65%
Speed : 15 mm/s

Taping the cut pieces before picking them up
Pieces smaller than the honeycomb were lost

Important tips and tricks !

Warped materials :

• The ply was a bit warped so it would not lay flat on the bed. So we added an offset frame around each outer square/circle.
• This frame was also coloured differently/set as a different layer in RDWorks.
• This meant that we could now set this frame layer to cut BEFORE the interior pieces, so just the piece would drop out of the warped larger stock and lay flat on the bed and the rest of the smaller pieces would cut fine.
• Credits to Shivam, our Lab Manager, for this one !

Picking up the pieces :

• Each swatch was made up of dozens to hundreds of pieces
• This would have been impossible to "reassemble" if mixed up or even moved
• I decided that the pieces would best be taped together by the widest masking tape we had on hand and picked up off the bed as a swatch rather than in pieces
• The tape method worked so well for trials that I did not bother gluing layers of fabric to the wooden mosaic unless I wanted to take a particular swatch further

We also realised that there was a limit to the piece size, under which, they were falling through the honeycomb during the cutting already.

Shivam also had a suggestion for the future to keep small breakoff tabs (like PCBs sometimes) between the pieces and the frame or neighbouring pieces so small pieces don't fall out, and the taping is also not required. The tabs can be broken off and pieces made independent after gluing the fabric.

Results

Tessellations

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Linear

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Diamonds

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Conical

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2D Points - Voronoi & Delaunay

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Circular

Reflections

I loved this !
While there are so many more variants to try out from my own drawings and and more ideas, this was very satisfactory.

I would really like to try this with stretchable fabric to see the results though.

I would also like to try this with 2 layers of fabric, on both sides of the wood, and one or both being stretchable.

There are also more aspects to explore where the wood textile combination may behave like a compliant mechanism, a live hinge, a flexure, or other such things, where a combination of geometric/mechanical properties and the hard-soft material properties give rise to interesting structural properties, motions, and effects.

Textile Formwork

Tools

Materials

• Pvc pipes, 3/4 inch
• T joints
• L joints
• Stocking material
• Pins
• Thread
• Masking tape
• White glue
• Water

Tools

• Pliers
• Pipe cutter
• Scissors
• Brush
• Mixing bowl

Process

I began by first prepping up the prerequisites - the frame and the hooks - followed by tensioning the fabric.

PVC frame

This was made of 6 segments of pipe and 6 L joints that enclosed a cuboidal space. One of the L joints was then replaced with a T joint so further extensions can be added.

This is a frame that I use as a starting point for my class exercises as well.

Threads and Hooks

I bent straight pins into S shapes using pliers. Then I tied 30-40 cm long threads to each pin using quick and simple lark's head knots.

Each piece needs about 9-10 hooks.

Fabric

Stocking material is available as tubes. One of them I cut lengthwise and made a large flat piece of fabric. The other I used as a tube form.

I hooked 3-4 hooks into the fabric and stretched it, tying and taping the threads to hold the fabric in position.

After the initial stabilization, more hooks were added as needed to create the form.

Additionally, other jugaad/hacks were used to hold or pull the fabric in place. I created a sliding 4-way tensioner using a leftover pipe bit when there was no frame to anchor the pulling thread, or used pliers to weigh down a pipe that was hooked into the fabric to get a straight downward pull.

Once I was satisfied with the form, I admired it for a little while.

The fabric was in place. I mixed Fevicol, i.e. white glue, with water 1:1 to make it runny enough to apply with a brush but thick enough that it would dry to a good amount of stiffness.

The glue mix was applied with a brush and worked into the fabric.

As it dried, more coats were added.

Both assemblies were left to dry for a few days.

Results

Glueing the fabric definitely stiffens it, but it's not very hard yet. It as also somehow developed a sandy texture.

Since the fabric was translucent and coloured to begin with, it has lovely optical properties. The effect of strategically placed LEDs would be quite interesting.

Reflections

This is always a very interesting exercise. I would also want these forms to stand free of the frames. The form is not truly free if it needs the frame and tensioning to keep it in place. Then they can be very interesting sculptures.

I also want to extend this to actual applications. The easiest and most obvious ones that come up are lamp shades, but if the rigidity and strength of the fabric-composite are suitable, a lot more can be done.

Epilogue | Dec 2025

As I had mentioned, I get my students to do a similar exercise. This year's cohort has been very enthusiastic about it. We look forward to hardening some of these as well.

FY Class of 2025-26 - Aarushi, Nishka; Anushka, Jeevna; Deepika, Savita; Jiya, Sofia; Nishtha, Dhruvi; Parth, Kamlesh; Prisha, Arnav; Shaunak, Satchit; Sharvani, Aarya; Siah, Swara; Sugandhi, Keya; Tanushree, Yashwi; Trisha, Harshdeep

Crystallisation

Research and references

• Alum Crystals on Silk – Loes Bogers (Fabricademy Core Recipe)
• Borax Crystals – Loes Bogers (Fabricademy Core Recipe)
• Textile as Scaffold – Elsa Gil (Alum & Borax Crystals)

• Textile as Scaffold – Marisa Satsia (Epsom Salt & Borax Experiments)

• How to Grow Borax Crystals – Instructables

• Easy Crystal Growing Recipes (Borax, Alum, Epsom Salt) – ThoughtCo
• Crystal Growing Science – Home Science Tools

Simulation

As mentioned elsewhere, I do a lot of Creative Coding using p5.js to create visuals. I am also interested in the patterns and processes in Nature. And I like Math.

So here are some previous works I have of crystal deposition and growth.

The primary algorithms used are Diffusion Limited Aggregation and simplified Crack Propagation.

Tools

Materials :

• Alum
• Epsom Salt

Tools :

• Measuring scale
• Vessels
• Heat source - stove or induction cooktop
• Stirrers, mixers, etc

Objects to crystallize :

• Crocheted objects
• Knots from cord
• 3D Printed objects
• Fabric structures
• Leaf skeletons
• LEDs

Fabric Structures :

1. Image 5 : I 3d printed a frame on a fabric, and used machine screws positioned at the centre of the circles to push the stretchable material into conical surfaces for the crystals to deposit on
2. Image 6 : A scrap of fabric wrapped around 3 pieces of skewers to create a 3d surface for the crystals to deposit on

Leaf skeletons :

During the Biomaterials week, while looking for excess agricultural waste, I came upon trees being trimmed on campus. Some of them were Peepul tree trimmings, the famed tree with the heart shaped leaves, under which the Buddha is supposed to have attained enlightenment.

I knew how to make leaf skeletons from childhood; alhough it had been a while, I was very confident. So I gathered up a large handful of leaves, took them home and soaked them in living water.

While I wanted to try some Biomaterial experiments with them, they were ready only a few weeks later, so I figured I may as well use them as crystallisation bases.

LEDs :

LEDs legs and other metallic bits that will come into contact with the salt solution need to be protected from the corrosive effects. For this, they are painted over with clear nail polish.

Process

Proportion

Salt	Ratio (salt : water)	Quantity
Epsom salt	1 : 2	200 g : 400 ml
Alum	2 : 3	250 g : 400 ml
Borax	1 : 7	70 g : 500 ml

Steps

Prepping objects :

• Protect all metallic surfaces where they will come into contact with the salt solution - coat them with clear nail polish
• Tie threads to suspend the objects over the vessel. I used individual skewers so they could be rotated, winding the thread until the object hung at the right height, then taping the thread in place
• Soak and squeeze thick absorbent material like thick fabric or crocheted items so it has been wetted and the solution can reach everywhere and no air pockets are trapped. Be sure to squeeze out water though, since otherwise it would dilute the solution - even worse, dilute it only locally where crystals need to be deposited

Setup :

• Heat water until boiling
• Add salt gradually and stir until dissolved
• Use only the clear solution (filter if needed)
• Pour into a clean container
• Suspend object or fabric (not touching sides or bottom)
• Leave undisturbed to cool and crystallise
• Remove, dry, and store away from moisture

Tips :

Ultimately, it is about how saturated a solution you can make. The above proportions are starting points, but your water temperature, quality (if it is not distilled water) and room temperature will affect the quantity dissolved.

Results

Some Alum crystals have deposited on the cord. A lot more have precipitated and grown at the bottom of the container as well.

The cool-down method didn't really work. I guess ambient temperatures are too high for that.

The remaining containers have been set in a warm area for evaporation.

Reflections

Composites

I wanted to expressly try molding material using 3D prints for structure as well as wicking away moisture.

The other ideas did not push the envelope as much as this one did, so I'll put them all on hold until some other opportunity come up.

Tools

Software :

• Fusion 360
• PrusaSlicer

Tools :

• Blender/Mixie
• 3D printer

Material :

• PLA

• Stocking material

• Paper pulp

• White Glue
• Other fillers

Process

Mold Making

I need a mold to cast or press the pulp in to shape it

• I modelled the 2 part mold in Fusion 360
• I left a 4 mm gap between the cavity and the positive to make a 4 mm thick object, so even after shrinkage, it would be more than 2 mm hopefully.
• If the slipcast method worked, the positive would not be needed at all.

Then I 3D printed the mold but with the following settings changed from the usual

• No. of perimeters = 0
• No. of layers of top surface = 0
• Basically, everything except the bottom surface that would be on the bed would have 0 perimeters, exposing the infill
• Infill density had 2 variants - 80% and 30%

30% infill, no shells

80% infill, no shells

close up of 80% infill, no shells, showing inherent porosity

I have stopped here due to lack of time, and will continue this exploration later.

One last tip would be that I was going to use the stocking material in the 3D printed mold between the mold and the pulp.

Bottom cavity - fabric - pulp - fabric - top positive

This would hopefully prevent or help dislodge any pulp that dried up entrained in the mold pores.

Also while the 80% infill may form a sufficiently supportive surface, the 30% infill mold definitely looks like the fabric layer will help, since the gaps are quite large.

Reflections

I do believe it is a promising direction to explore, and will get to it at some point.

Reflections on the week

This week was a lot ! It was a lot of fun for all the stuff I did do, and I am truly looking forward to doing all the stuff I did not manage to do.

There is so much more to explore in Wood+Textile composites, on it's own as well in parallel to 3D printing on fabric.

Textile formwork produces such surreal forms, and there is a whole lot to explore there as well.

For crystallisation, while I love crystals growing, as beautiful natural process, I did not have too much to look forward to in terms of explorations. But even there, the session showed me there so much more. I will be happy to simply grow my own crystals for now, but try to make them as large as possible. Coloured, conductive, piezo, and others I will leave for later.

Composites is something I am quite entwined into, so I have no worries I will be dabbling in that sooner rather than later.

All in all, the week was overwhelming in it's possibilities. Maybe the only reason I am still sane is that I had to attend my niece's wedding in a different state the same week, so I heavily curtailed my explorations from the start. Still, I would not be amiss if I said there is a year's worth of experimentation I could extend to do only from these initial ideas and the learnings from this week.

Fabrication Files

Wood Composites Generator - Grasshopper
WoodComposites DXF drawings

PaperPulp Mold_Cavity.stl
PaperPulp Mold_Top.stl
PaperPulp Mold.f3d

CrystalSuspender1.stl CrystalSuspender2.stl

Credits and Acknowledgements

Image Credits : All credits mine unless mentioned otherwise.

I would heartily like to acknowledge our Lab Manager, Shivam, who was extremely helpful and supportive in all the activities of this week, especially the wood composite lasercutting. He offered great insights and a helping hand for being effective and efficient, especially when things would tend to veer sideways.