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What's up guys?
It's Devin here with make anything and today's video is a little different from what I tend to do because this project is less about
one specific end goal
And it's more about experimentation and sharing my process with you guys
So what I have here in front of me is this table full of 3d printed fabrics or
attempts to create a 3d printed fabric and this is something that's fascinated me since I got my very first 3d printer because
Everything you print on the 3d printer is pretty solid and rigid typically sure there's flexible filaments
But even those don't flow and behave quite like a fabric or a cloth does and that's something that I've been trying to recreate
Now by no means am I the first person to try my hand at creating 3d printed fabrics
There's plenty of users online who have shared their designs for years fashion designers have created fully wearable clothing
That's all 3d printed even NASA has come up with a few really cool models, so
That's nothing that I'm trying to claim to do, but I think my own process and approach is something
that would be fun for you guys to see and I'm
Thinking I came up with some things in different ways so it's fun to share I feel like I'm just scratching the surface here
But I decided to share what I have right now
just so it doesn't become overwhelming and so hopefully you guys can come up with some ideas based on what I've done and
Maybe create your own 3d printer fabrics, or give me some ideas of what I can do moving forward
So let me just go ahead and share all of this
Starting with my very first experiment that I did way back in 2014
What we have here is a kind of Dragon Skin chainmail that I was trying to create all of this is printed in one piece
And I was really trying to avoid support material, and it didn't work out
but as you can see there's a lot of space between the scales and
It kind of got tangled up a little bit too easily, so while the idea is pretty cool
I didn't get back into trying 3d printed fabrics until just recently
this fabric consists of these loops printed at
45-degree angles that way they can all be printed to interlock each other in a single print and in some ways it was pretty successful
It is super flowy and flexible it bends quite nicely however
I didn't have much luck printing this at a smaller scale the prints tended to fail and they kind of just lost their flexibility
Also in general this fabric didn't feel really nice
It was kind of rough on the skin and for that reason I decided to move on and try some different techniques
Here's one. That was quite different rather than having interlocking pieces
This is just one sheet
But it has these really thin connections between each triangle that allow it to kind of flex
While this was a lot easier to print it presented a few problems
For one thing you can only bend it so many times before it just broke in half
Also, because this is a single piece it behaves more like paper than a fabric in that you can't really do compound curves
You wouldn't be able to bend this over the top of a balloon without it having some wrinkles
Or bends still it does have some interesting properties
You can bend it in certain ways that might be useful for something that you print flat and Bend into its final shape for example
I'm not sure, but I do think there's some potential behind this idea
Here's another attempt where I was trying to make the most thin
dense mesh that I could in this case I ended up printing it a little bit too small and
All the different loops kind of ended up merging together, but as you can see this is another idea inspired by?
Chainmail where it's these loops that all lock together
Here it is printed 30% larger, and it was a lot more successful at this size, but it still wasn't completely flexible
But it does create this really beautiful shimmer. That's quite mesmerizing
I just kept scaling this model up a little bit at a time until I was able to get it to print really successfully and
Here it is printed up pretty much double the original scale on the tebow tornado
At this scale it was finally behaving the way, I wanted to it's super flowy
It feels kind of soft for being a rough plastic and you can even curl it into a ball and then open it up again
So it's a lot like a fabric you
can see how the loops on the edge tended to spin around and kind of get a little messy so to fix that I just
Printed a rigid border around the whole model with that change. It makes this really cool tile of sorts
That's a great demonstration of this 3d printed fabric
Check out how you can see all my individual fingers and just how well this flows
I also just really like the idea of being able to print something that has both rigid and fabric parts in a single print and a
single material
for example with this thing I could print some kind of fixture at the top to hang this and
Build in a light to make some kind of interesting hanging lamp or anything like that
You can also print any kind of shape so I made this circular version
That's also really cool
and I noticed how it droops down in the middle so I created some additional parts that you can use to turn this into an
interesting unique Bowl, it's nice for holding your keys and wallet or
Any kind of small items it's just pretty different. I like it
also, it makes music I
Would definitely call that test a success, but these next ones are by far my favorite
This is a triangular mesh that I designed where each triangle has these loops that connect to all the adjacent triangles
to create a flexible material
This one was my first test where I printed it a little bit too small so once again
It lost that flexibility, but it does have this cool shimmer to it and when I printed that larger. It works really well I
Printed this in a few colors, and I also tried some variations like this version that has holes in some of the triangles
but personally I like the one that's all solid I
Wanted to be able to make really large pieces of fabric
so I created this version of
Model where the edge loops are open so that you can kind of hook them together
And then stitch them together after the fact using a 3d pen
These pieces here are about as small as I was able to successfully print this fabric
But at this scale it became very fragile especially the open loops at the edges here
So I decided to print it a little bit larger and that made a big difference you can see how strong it is now
Once I found that perfect size, I printed out a whole bunch of these tiles and started fusing them together
Here you can see me using my 3d pen to close those loops
And I also have this little makeshift aluminum paddle that I made to keep the parts from fusing together
I wasn't sure if I would be able to do it at this tiny scale but it actually worked out really well and
The loops that I made with the 3d pen hold just as strong as the ones that were 3d printed
Here's my cloth after stitching together nine of these panels and at this point
It's really satisfying it flows super nicely, and it's got that same beautiful shimmer that it had earlier
With that working so well, I designed some extra parts
specifically for the edges of the fabric that way you can finish it off have straight edges all around and
Not have any open loops that don't need to be there
Just like all the other tiles you'll hook them into place and fuse them together with the 3d pen and
Here you can see the final product
I'm absolutely thrilled with how this fabric came out it prints. Well. It looks great. It feels amazing
It's just really satisfying to play with and I like the fact that it has this one really smooth side and then on the other
Side you can see all the joints, and how it actually works
I wasn't sure I would be able to top this, but then I went ahead and printed these really cool patterns
Believe it or not this was made in a single print without using any 3d pen or anything
It was made using the multi material upgrade for the Prusa i3 Mark 2 - printer, and this printer only has one nozzle
But it uses a purge block to blend between the different colors so that it can get really clean for color prints up
Top there are four extruders one for each spool of filament
And those are all fed into the single hot end
All it takes is a special g code to make sure that only one color is fed in at a time
There actually was a power outage, so this print didn't complete 100%
But it got far enough that the loops were all closed
and I was still able to get a really cool single piece of fabric I
Really, love how this came out especially with these colors. I'm using matter hackers Pro PLA in Burgundy
Gold black and white I also printed out this second version using their blonde yellow PLA
And I think that gives it a really beautiful autumn theme
By the way if you have a 3d printer all these files are gonna be free to download and print at myminifactory.com
So make sure to check out the link in the description because you're gonna want to print these
The last thing I wanted to try out was printing this same fabric
But a lot larger so I made this second version that's nearly the same, but it's almost twice as large
Just like the smaller version. I printed out several tiles like this that way I could fit it all on my printer
And then I stitched them all together to make a really big quilt
Okay, prepare to be extremely satisfied
Yeah, this thing is just super fun to play with I have not been able to take my hands off of it since I first
printed them out I
Also printed out those edge models again, so this is really just a giant version of the other model
Of course closing these larger loops with the 3d pen is gonna
Take a bit more time and a bit more material, but it worked out just as well in this case
I just used the blade from my alpha cutter to separate the two parts. Just because it was the perfect size
Here it is all finished up and not surprisingly. It's pretty darn awesome
It's interesting that in one direction
It folds pretty well, but if you fold it the other way it kind of holds its shape in an arc
And if you stack it just right it'll stand up on its own creating these really cool abstract sculptures
I
Also noticed that this fabric
Scatters light in a really cool way when the Sun hit it through the window
And I had all these little triangles dancing around my room
It also cast a really cool shadow so this stuff has all kinds of interesting properties that are gonna
Be really fun to play around with and of course I could pretty much do this forever
All right guys so that's pretty much what I've come up with so far with this 3d printed fabric idea
And I think some of the concepts were really successful like this one
and
I'm thinking this would be really cool to make a 3d printed cap but as you saw there's also
maybe some non fashion uses for this 3d printed fabric like this Bowl or
who knows what else I'm
Hoping you guys can come up with some cool ideas and share them with me through the new make anything creative network that I've created
over at my website make anything design make sure to check that out share your ideas and
Inspiration regarding this project or anything that you're working on it's been really fun
I want to thank the people who have shared their work so far
It's nice to see what everyone else is up to and of course
I've got to thank my sponsor Squarespace for giving me the power to make this really cool
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Like I said, we'll keep working on this 3d printed fabric together, but that's it for today so until next time
I'm Devon. This is make anything don't forget to stay inspired
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