I will try to print clothing. Dresses, shirts, skirts, etc.
Maybe have someone some experience with materials for clothing.
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Hi @mdevisser,
Sounds like a really cool project! Most of the clothing/fashion items that we’ve seen so far are either rigid pieces or interlinking meshes similar to chain mail. They also tend to be very expensive, one-off products for the fashion show catwalks. They generally do not look comfortable. In short, we’re not impressed. Yet.
The suggestions from the other hubs are accurate in that Ninjaflex and other TPE filaments are definitely flexible and elastic. However, I would question whether they would be comfortable. It would likely be a bit like wearing a latex or vinyl suit—not very breathable nor very soft to the skin.
You may be interested in some of the materials in the LAYFOMM line of filaments. My colleagues and I at Cinter have consistently had our minds blown by the work of Kai Parthy ever since we started experimenting with his Laywood and Laybrick filaments about 2 years ago. Many filament producers have since jumped on the bandwagon and started to produce their own composite wood filaments.
Getting back to LAYFOMM, you’ll most likely want to have a look at either the LAY-FELT or the LAY-TEKKKS filaments. I expect that you could produce a dress from multiple panels, much like panel knitting in which pieces are produced individually and then joined together. Please keep in mind that these are experimental filaments. They are more expensive and can be much more sensitive to ambient temperature and humidity. You should probably expect a 30-50% success rate at the beginning, and you may need to make some modifications to your extruder. It’s also safe to assume that you will need to optimise your design for the material itself.
In any event, the materials themselves look super cool! Please keep us updated on where you get with your project.
Here is a link to an article on the LAYFOMM line: http://3dprintingindustry.com/2013/12/24/kai-parthy-gets-felty-foamy-porous-poro-lay-line-filaments/ 17
Interesting @james_hance expect it might be harder to print than flexible filaments since it so porous… Might look out for it to experiment.
are you familiar with our inBloom dress? http://3dprintingindustry.com/2014/08/22/blossoming-catwalk-xyz-workshops-3d-printed-inbloom-dress/ 16
you our can download our design for free from #ultimaker #youmagine site. And I can comfortably say it is quite comfortable depending how you design it. I wear a watch version everyday. And it feels abit like leather. We’ve had no complaints about from the models that wear our dresses but then again they don’t wear it for the whole day.
But it I agree that for comfort there needs to be a certain level of porousity to let the human skin breath. That’s why we model our dress with openings to allow that to happen.
we still haven’t figured out how to wash it haha. Cause you can send the dress to the dry cleaner of it will become a pile of goop. Hosing it down in the lawn is probrably the best way, but that ain’t very glamorous is it?
Sorry quite a few typos there… I mean…You can’t send it to the dry cleaners