New Textiles 2012 » Embroidery/3d Print

3d Printed Fabric – Solomon Knots

ManuelDSP — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:01:01 +0000

For this project I chose to model a woven fabric. The design I chose is called a Solomon knot. The 3d model was constructed in Rhino using a virtual peg board, similar to how one would be used in real life. The path of the yarn was mapped using control points, and image of the Solomon knots to trace and 4 different planes. Once the curves that constructed the pattern were in place they were given a thickness of 2mm, and adjustments were necessary to make sure that these cylindrical solids did not intersect. Once there were no intersections and the solid was watertight, it could be sent to be 3d printed using a polyjet printer. The piece was then excavated from the support material.

Re-Link Bracelet

nwp — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:10:00 +0000

The re-link Bracelet is a simple investigation into a repeatable link module that can chained together to produce a textile with multiple axes of flexure. I started by looking at the interlocking geometries of a single loop using line geometry in Rhino and the “pipe” command to give it thickness. I progressed from 1 link to 2 links, to 3 links within a single module by adding twists.

The final outcome is rendered as a fine resolution 1/16th inch thick tube link that twists 2 times to form a 1.5″ x 7″ x 1/4″ textile.

I used at Dimension 3-D printer with a white ABS plastic. We have access to one that costs 5$ per cubic inch of printed material so it was roughly 13 bucks. The total print took 12 hours and produced a hypbrid structure. The photos below show the support structure before the print is placed in an aggetator chemical bath.

After 3 hours in the chemical bath, the textile was pure ABS. It proved to has some ridges due to the layered printing. This rough edge caused some unexpected friction resulting in a tendency to twist into a helical cord.

Here is it is shown as its intended mother’s day bracelet, but I think I would like to make another iteration before sending this out into the world.

Embroidered Turtle Shape Cushions

daniela — Tue, 01 May 2012 18:40:54 +0000

I started by exploring some existing processing code on this site and decided to play around with this turtle code. It’s pretty fun to just change the rotation parameter to get different path shapes for the “turtle”, but you can also easily adjust the scale and time step (which both result in a different size of each step). There is also a bias parameter which controls the percentage of bias of the turtle to turn right and not left, but I wasn’t able to see much difference in the results when I varied that number. The original code is not set up to output anything, it just runs the two “turtles” until they wander off the screen, so I added code to export the final image to a pdf (which was a little more difficult than just copy pasting since the original code wasn’t set up for it…I ended up having to add a counter to ensure it stopped the recording after the second turtle finished its path). You can download my adjusted code here.

For the embroidery, I decided to make a series of turtle paths that formed different geometric shapes: a square, a triangle, a hexagon, and a circle (approximated as a many sided polygon). I then wanted to make mini cushions that were cut out into the corresponding shape. I only managed to finish one of the cushions (the hexagon) because I ran out of time on the machine and had to hand sew the cushion construction, which took much longer than expected.

Turtle shapes:

Test run:

Embroidering!

Embroidered!

Final cut outs:

Cushion!

Snap your shirt

Yoav — Tue, 01 May 2012 16:56:15 +0000

For the 3D textile assignment I wanted to use the new MakerBot Replicator 3D printer that we just got for our research group. This machine can print with two colors so there is great potential of printing patterns with colors. The challenge is to design a 3D printed textile without support material (actually there is an option to use support material instead of one of the colors but then you can print with only one color and it is less interesting). I was trying to get the printer print “on air” and have the extruded plastic suspended between two points. Unfortunately, the machine is not working perfectly and I had a lot of trouble getting the first layer of plastic to stick to the heated platform.
This is a pattern that I was able to get from the printer:

After I gave up on the replicator I made another design for 3D printed fabric. This time I designed it for the Dimension 3D printer in the CBA shop.I designed a pattern with support material.
The concept is small balls that can be printed in different dressmaking patterns. The balls are closed and integrated inside each other but the ball on the edge have a small gap. This gap can be used to connect another sheet of printed fabric and construct a garment. Instead of sewing, you can create your shirt by clicking pieces of printed fabric.

Leaflet.

bijal — Tue, 01 May 2012 16:15:54 +0000

This week, I decided to expand on my bracelet line and add an embroidered piece to the mix. Although using an embroidery machine saved me from actually learning how to embroider, the process of having something to show for my work was a bit painful. I ran to a lot of issues which I describe below.

Lesson #1:

Always start with a non-complicated design. I’ll admit, the directions for using the embroidery adapter on the sewing machine seemed quite easy and so I decided to hit the ground running. In particular, I was hoping to embroider the following design:

Although this would have been awesome, the embroidery program couldn’t handle the complexity of the design and crashed numerous times. This is when I realized, starting off with something similar would have been better.

Lesson #2:

I finally narrowed down the design to be just one of the leafs of the spiral windmill shown above. This reduced the number of stitches required and made it easier for the program to handle. However, the next complexity came with using the dissolvable stabilizer. I thought that just embroidering into the stabilizer and running it under water once the embroidery was done would do the trick. Unfortunately, a special stitch is required and my design turned to mush soon after being put under water.

Finally, taking all of these learnings, I gave it one last shot and decided to make a simple leaf inspired bracelet below. I only used one leaf of the vornoi I generated and then attached strings to the end of the embroidered piece to make a bracelet. The work in progress, and final product is below:

Then I made an assembly of these stitch parts in rows. I rotated and fit together the stitch rows in an alternating pattern to make the loops interlock.

This is the finished 3D design:

I used a 3D printer at MIT’s main campus and used ABS plastic. I would have preferred to use a softer and more flexible material, but this was the only kind of material available for the printer I used.

The textile is printed with lots of support material on a tray.

I chemically dissolved the support material in a bath. Here is the end product:

Here’s a video of the textile in action. The textile can bend and is quite floppy, considering that it is made from stiff ABS plastic.

3D Print Textile – Hauer Study

Vernelle Noel — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:34:05 +0000

This week our assignment was to do either of two things… Do an embroidery or design and 3d print a textile structure. I began by trying to embroider one of my sketches.. but time was not on my side so I opted for doing the 3D print textile..

This is what I wanted to embroider… but didn’t.. not this time at least… NEXT TIME.. I began trying to do a textile pattern in Rhino… but wanted to try something else too..

I wanted to try patterns with Erwin Hauer as my inspiration.. Erwin is an Austrian sculptor who explores infinite, continuous surfaces.

Screen designed by Hauer..

Single module showing geometric relationship of shapes….

Module…

Render..

Design and relationship 2

Pattern…

Relationship 3..

We can embroider your picture

yihyun.lim — Tue, 01 May 2012 13:26:08 +0000

While I was searching for pattern codes and inspiration images, I came across this line-art image (a profile “photo” of this person’s website :http://nwerneck.sdf.org/). The dashed hatch line thickens and thins in this image, and I thought it could be a perfect embroidery patter with a mixture of lines and fills. It also seems to be computer generated, and I could sketch out a possible line of Processing in my head. Load image -> filter image (black and white) -> analyze pixels -> draw lines -> make lines thicker where black pixels are -> print to pdf . Voila! Now with my limited Processing skills….

I started by digging into Processing book and website for sample codes as a starting point. I grabbed the “Writing to another PImage object’s pixels” code from here, and made slight modifications. Although I knew what I wanted to do next (take pixel data and thicken series of line at specific pixel points, for example), I wasn’t able to get exactly what I had envisioned. Instead, I decided to make it graphically similar: I drew thick white lines on top of the image via Processing. Then I was able to export the image to PDF and make some Illustrator adjustments such as merging, trimming lines before I took it to the embroidery machine.

Below is the code I put together to covert an image (You can grab the code and load any image).

______________________

import processing.pdf.*;

PImage source; // Source image

PImage destination; // Destination image

void setup() {

size(420, 420);

beginRecord(PDF, “yihyun.pdf”);

smooth();

fill(0);

strokeWeight(4);

stroke(255);

noLoop();

source = loadImage(“yihyun.JPG”);

// The destination image is created as a blank image the same size as the source.

destination = createImage(source.width, source.height, RGB);

}

void draw() {

{

float threshold = 170;

// We are going to look at both image’s pixels

source.loadPixels();

destination.loadPixels();

for (int x = 0; x < source.width; x++) {

for (int y = 0; y < source.height; y++ ) {

int loc = x + y*source.width;

// Test the brightness against the threshold

if (brightness(source.pixels[loc]) > threshold) {

destination.pixels[loc] = color(255); // White

} else {

destination.pixels[loc] = color(0); // Black

}

// We changed the pixels in destination

destination.updatePixels();

// Display the destination

image(destination,0,0);

}

for (int x = 0; x <=500; x +=8){

line(0, x, width, x);

}

endRecord();

}

______________________

I used a snapshot image of myself and ran it through the Processing code. It generated a pattern on the right side. Then I cleaned up the file a bit via Illustrator (live trace, merge, trim, etc).

The larger image on the bottom is the file I imported to the embroidery software.

Bernina embroidery machine in action! (It took a while to figure out the machine with its error messages, spools running out of thread, but once everything was set, the rest of the process was seamlessly easy) And here’s the final embroidery above. One of a kind embroidered portrait.

lace pendant necklace

lefroyobunny — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:19:22 +0000

In this week’s assignment, I continued to experiment with knit structures but in an untraditional sense. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a demo session by Felicia Davis (Design Computation-MIT) on 3d-print knit structures. During the demo, we used Rhino to model a knit structure which can be 3d printed. I became very interested in this method, and wanted to combine the 3d print idea with some of the work that other artists like Diana Eng does with textiles.

I started my design by visiting the Shapeways website to learn about the different materials and their properties. Most importantly, I need to find out the minimum thickness of the material that can be 3d printed, and the bed size of the 3d printers. The material properties, like flexibility and malleability, is also important, because it defines the wear-ablility of the jewelry. In the end, I chose to 3d print with the white, strong, and flexible in the color purple.

I started my design by creating simple modules that promise interesting, tessellation effects. For the module to become textile-like, it also needs to easily attach to itself. I experimented with several designs by first drawing lines, then rotating them in 3d space, and finally use the command “pipe” to give them thickness. The diameter of the module is 2 mm. It is unlikely that structures with alls <2mm in diameter can withstand the stress of wear and tear as jewelry, as explained to me in the tutorial section of the Shapeways website. Another important requirement is that the design must be a solid. This means that the structure must be fully closed on itself. A final piece of advice when creating 3d textiles is that each module can not intersect with one another in the structure. If they do, this will render the final product useless as a movable piece. It will be rigid where it intersects. I figured out a trick to speed things up in checking for intersections. Simply select the entire structure and type in the command “boolean union.” If meshes are created, that means there are intersecting modules. If not, then the design is good to go.

Originally, I designed a full necklace at a thickness of 0.9mm before I realized my mistake. If this structure survives the 3d printing and excavation, it will be “string-like”, and unwearable.

[rendering of first trial necklace]

I scrapped the original design, and started fresh, this time with the correct thickness for the walls. Below is a rendering of my favorite module.

During the design process, I didn’t really think about the cost. I had thought that the company would charge based on the amount of material in the final product, but it turns out that they charge based on the dimensions of an imaginary 3D box that can encase the design. Below is a render of my ideal 3D print necklace.

This structure would have costed me over $250 to print!

Of course, I don’t have this kind of money, so I had to downsize. Below is a smaller version of the necklace.

Still, this is too expensive. It would cost me $180.

I realize at this point that the amount of the necklace that I can print would be less than 1/4 of what I designed in Rhino.

This small section of my design cost me $90. 3D printing is extremely expensive, I learned. However, I look forward to receiving this little piece of art and wear it as a piece of my own design.

I have not received my order yet. It is scheduled to be delivered by the end of the day, May 1. If I’m lucky, it will get here before class! I will upload some pictures after I receive the product!

[UPDATE]

I finally received the 3D printed necklace! To make it wearable, I used strings of yellow leather strands to braid fishtail pattern on either side of the necklace.

Embroidered Giraffe, Tree, Flowers, Voronoi

gracie15 — Tue, 01 May 2012 04:38:06 +0000

For this assignment, I chose to do an embroidery using the embroidery machine. There were several ideas that I had so I spent a lot of time with the Processing programming language at first, coming up with a design that I wanted to embroider. My initial design that I wanted to embroider was inspired by a design I saw on OpenProcessing.org where an image was uploaded and filled in with letters. So I designed a tree filled with the words “Technology, Innovation, Education” in the spirit of the degree program that I am currently in. Here is a picture of the result:

Due to the way the code was written for this program, it ended up that I was not able to generate this file as a pdf to preserve the vector graphics. After spending a lot of time with the “record” functions in Processing to try to do this, it was determined that it was probably the renderer that I was using that was preventing it from being recorded as a pdf. I also tried to do a live trace of the image in Adobe Illustrator but had no luck in preserving all the lines. In any case, I was told eventually that this was a fairly complex design and it was probably not going to work out well on the embroidery machine afterall so I moved on to a new design.

I decided to simplify my design and do something completely different. This time I opted to created a voirnoi diagram out of a grid pattern and spirals. Here is what I created by modifying some of Jennifer Jacob’s voronoi code:

I uploaded this to Corel Draw and while there I decided to fill in a portion of the pattern with the intention of using a fill on the embroidery machine. I also cut out a part of the image to save some time on the machine. I then exported it as an .ai file, then imported into the Drawings 4 software. I decided to use a triple running stitch for all the lines and used green thread. I also set it so that the fills were different for several portions of the pattern. I attached a piece of linen fabric and interfacing to the embroidery hoop, attached it to the machine and started the embroidery process. For some reason though (I think it was due to a glitch in the software where “none” was not deselected on the stitch menu) my fills did not end up getting filled in. Here is my finished product for this design:

I also experimented with a different design. This time it was a pentigree L System design as seen below:

I followed the same process as mentioned above to attach fabric to the embroidery machine and start it off. This time I only did a single running stitch so the lines came out much thinner and I did no fills.

Here is my finished product.

While I thought these designs turned out nice, I was still not satisfied and wanted to create one additional design that I had thought about. I have been fascinated with the fact that voronoi diagrams are seen in nature such as on a giraffe’s spots or a butterfly’s wings so I wanted to create an outline of a giraffe and fill it in with a generated voronoi digram. So that is what I did. :)

Here is the voronoi pattern that I created which has a good mix of small and large shapes. This was a a grid pattern layered with spirals using the voronoi code.

I then found an image of a giraffe online and deleted everything except for the outline of it using Adobe Illustrator. I then layered the voronoi pattern I generated on top of it and cleaned up the edges. I then filled in some of the spots with the intention that they would be filled in with a satin stich once I got to the embroidery machine. Below is the resulting image.

Once in the Drawings 4 software, I set all my fills to be a satin stich with different patterns so that I can see a variety of stitches on the resulting embroidered image. I left everything else on the default which apparently came out to be a satin stitch for most of the edges. I used all brown thread for this. One thing that I discovered as my pattern was getting embroidered was that I had uploaded my image with a couple different colors in the image so the software interpreted this as separate parts of the pattern, and therefore somewhat inefficiently embroidered from one edge of the giraffe to the next leaving me with a lot of extra threads I had to cut off in the end. Overall though I was happy with my pattern. The work in progress and final result is seen below.

Link to all Processing Code.