Clothes Made of 3-D Printed Chainmail

3D printing was looking for the killer app and I suspect that we have just discovered it.  Materials will have to be designed and mastered, but the software solution is already to hand.  Presume every design can be processed this way and presume all imaginable textures can be produced.  The material can even be made as strong and as light as we desire.  Thus you pick the design you want, step into a measuring booth allowing the computer to produce a three dimensional model and let the system for the rest.  You receive a packaged tightly compressed garment that easily shakes out.

It that is not a billion dollar industry, I do not know what is.  Better, it is coming quickly.

I expect plenty of limitations but then with the size of the industry and natural reward already built in, change will come quickly.

However, your home printer can merely print off a simple gown or coverall every day if you want.  It may well be coming to that.  Remember Star Trek?

Look at These Clothes Made of 3-D Printed Chainmail

BY JOSEPH FLAHERTY

12.17.13

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/forget-self-driving-cars-google-is-sponsoring-3-d-printed-fashion/

Nervous System, the Boston-based design firm founded by Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg has been making stylish, 3-D printed jewelry for years, but have just developed new design software that could shake up the 3-D printing market. Photo: Nervous System

It might be hard to believe, but 3-D printers are already passé. Sure, there’ll be a steady flow of cool hardware and neat materials in the years to come, but the reality is that low-cost 3-D printers are basically machines that are great at cranking out small plastic objects, very slowly. But they don’t have to be.

Nervous System, the Boston-based design studio known for combining biologically inspired aesthetics with additive fabrication has developed a new software tool called Kinematics that pairs 3-D printers with web-based design tools to create large, desirable objects in under an hour.

Kinematics was inspired by a commission from Google who wanted a stylish way to promote their uber-customizable Moto X phone. Their goal was to send a van around the country to demo the device and leave visitors with a 3-D printed souvenir. The challenge was that the tchotchkes had to be customized by the shoppers and printed in the vehicle while they received the sales pitch.

Nervous System was excited by the open-ended challenge, but knew that traditional prints would take far too long. They realized that by printing relatively flat designs with built-in hinges, parts could be folded into impressive structures, but printed in a fraction of the time. The result was a Javascript tool that allowed visitors to customize a chunky piece of jewelry via touchscreen and have it 3-D printed and assembled as they watched.

He believes Kinematics is a generalizable tool that can be applied to everything.

After Google 3-D printed their last tchotcke, Nervous System continued developing the software and upgraded to a larger, higher-resolution selective laser sintering 3-D printer that enables more adventurous geometries. Emboldened by the success of their jewelry, they decided to step up the fashion food chain and print entire dresses.

Each garment starts as a 3-D model, created in the traditional fashion. The Kinematics software then breaks the model down into triangular planes, flattens the now polygonal 3-D model into a glorified 2-D sheet, and adds hinges that allow the printed piece to be folded back into its original form like a giant piece of plastic origami. It then compresses the garment, reducing its volume by 85 percent, and sends it to the 3-D printer for fabrication.

The results are impressive and compare favorably to Iris Van Herpen’s 3-D printed haute couture and Victoria’s Secret’s rapid prototyped panties, but Nervous System cofounder Jesse Louis-Rosenberg believes we’re a long way to go before we’re printing our wardrobes. “Once we see 3-D printed fashion actually being worn at a real event by someone not as a 3-D printed thing, but simply as fashion, that will be a sign it is ready to go mainstream.” Instead, he believes Kinematics is a generalizable tool that can be applied to everything from wearables to sculptures. 3-D printer operators can try it out here.

New releases to the software will features options for building in locking mechanisms to stabilize the parts, alternatives to the bulky hinge mechanism, and developing new folding schemes that will help avoid the distinct polygonal feel many of the Kinematics pieces share. Eventually, Louis-Rosenberg would like to support printers capable of producing parts with multiple materials: “We are excited about the possibilities of combining hard and soft, conductive and insulating.”

Kinematics shares similarities with Hyperform, the inventive “4-D printing” process developed by MIT alum and TED Fellow Skyler Tibbets. Both tools radically expand the size of objects that can be printed on affordable machines, but Louis-Rosenberg is looking to solve an even bigger problem.

‘Design is the often neglected other half of making 3-D printing accessible.’

“A 3-D printer isn’t very useful if you can’t make anything for it to print,” says Louis-Rosenberg. “Design is the often neglected other half of making 3-D printing accessible.” Despite its importance, 3-D modeling software is expensive, difficult to learn, and apps that offer 3-D scanning as a solution often createmonstrous results. There is also the deeper issue that for all the democratization 3-D printers bring to the world, few people consider themselves designers. They might be able to put together a slick ensemble from Nordstrom, but given a sewing machine and fabric, they’d freeze.

Going forward, Nervous System wants their design tools to be engaging, fun even, and so far they seem to be on the right path. “Kinematics seems to have really clicked with people,” says Louis-Rosenberg. “It’s a great step towards engaging people in design and having consumers play a more active role in the things they own.”

2013 can easily be called the year of 3-D printing with Makerbot’s acquisition by Stratasys, the launch of the hi-def Formlabs Form 1—among countless new systems—as well as the torrid stock performance of more established companies. That said, 2014 is shaping up to be the year that software engineers develop tools that will put all these amazing machines to good use and actually deliver on the promise of next-generation manufacturing.