Comfort Crusader

Hi everyone,

I'll be surprised if this gets read and anyone responds, as I haven't had a chance to read anyone else's introductions yet. Fortunately, not everyone is like me.

I believe I somehow arrived at Shapeways last night via Eric Ho, who followed me on Twitter, though I don't know why, and whose Feed I checked because of it. He had created an adorable little creature called Guinea Saurus Rex, which seems to be made of fabric. This especially excited me because, while I'm not especially interested in such little characters I am very, very interested in printing fabric, specifically dresses. Soft comfortable dresses with built-in bust support. Dresses that fit perfectly, no matter your shape or size, because each one is custom made for your body, unless you have a pretty generic shape and size, in which case you can buy off the rack. There will be racks that anyone can buy off of at will, as well as scanning booths and kiosks to have clothes custom printed. All of that is a bit down the line, as I don't have the first dress yet

I live on the beautiful south Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, a developing nation, and don't have the resources that most 3D designers have, so I'm looking for collaborators to help me realize this project, as well as others, including scalable, adjustable furniture and solar clothes drying kits.

I don't have any software--I don't even own a computer, though I'm typing this on a friend's computer tethered to the 3G from my Android phone, one of my 3 portable Internet access devices. I haven't heard of a computer that I want yet, and have been living quite well without one, for the most part, since the crappy used Clamshell Macintosh I bought after my beloved MacBook Pro was stolen put me out of the misery it induced when it stopped working in 2010. Yes, it's true: I have gone nearly five years without my own computer and I'm much freer and happier for it, so I want to be able to design and print Everything] from portable devices, too. Ideally the programs will be available to older technology not usually supported. I know: This woman must be mad!

Thank you for this wonderful forum. I'm looking forward to getting to know many of you, as well as your wonderful work!

Well we've done digital fabric, which is using Nylon prints which are very strong and flexible, to mimic fabric. The Guinea Saurus Rex is actually printed in Full Color Sandstone, which is very solid, and not flexible at all.

Thanks for the response!

Nylon is looking like it's going to be the medium of choice for me to start with. What kind of printer do you use for it? I'm so confused by all the choices, none of which (so far) has seemed like the right one for me.

So funny that the Guinea Saurus Rex looked so cute and cuddly to me. I noticed earlier what it was made of and was very surprised.

Nylon is printed on EOS printers.

Thank you so much. I'll check out the EOS printers. I really want to print clothes with cotton or hemp, and furniture with recycled cardboard boxes, but as far as I can tell that's not possible yet. This is all very exciting. I want to acquire something soon to bring back to Costa Rica with me. I don't know of anyone in this country who has a 3D printer yet, though there probably is someone. I have so many ideas for things I want to make and I think I'm going to need more than one kind of printer, though hopefully I'll find software that can do it all.

I'm so happy to have found this forum. My head was spinning with all the choices. How nice to connect with experienced users!

Print cotton or hemp and from cardboard boxes? What do you mean? As in... print out a full dress, made out of real fabric (like cotton)?

That's what I mean. I know it seems insane right now but a short time ago no one thought that it'd be possible to print food or metal, either. I believe that cardboard can be processed, ground into powder, probably, and combined with a resin, just like other substances are being used. Of course, I've not been able to find any evidence of anyone doing anything like this yet, but it's going to happen and I want to know when it does and jump right on it, because I've got things to print!

3D modeling of clothing has been done for years. I plan to expand on that to make life-size dresses made to order for human beings based on a person's exact measurements. Sure, garments may need to be done in pieces to start with and then assembled. I've been seeking more information on the wedding dress that was recently made by Xuberance and the dresses Melinda Looi showed at the 3D Print Show in New York, but the details escape me thus far. It's possible that I can get some sort of robot or other machine to assemble the dresses as needed, but since they won't be standard sizes I'm not sure how difficult that'll be. In the meantime there are people who know how to sew.

The furniture should be much easier to do, once I find out what I need to make it. That can finance the dress company.

Well yeah, but the clothes made thus far have been from plastic/nylon/smth pieces fit together to properly dress a human form. They can be made elastic (and I saw a video of a bra made out of elastic plastic and shoes made out of plastic or metal), but they still won't be cotton or hemp. These are organic. Fabric can't be ground up and then poured or sculpted by a machine - it's made out of thousands of thin "strings" (sorry, English is not my native language) that are then interwoven together to form what you see as the fabric. Same with cardboard - it's made out of fiber, though I do assume it can be more easily 3D printed than fabric... But even so, I can't guarantee that the result would be "cardboard" and not... well, a different, denser, harder material.

And even if we do get the technology for this 5-10 years from now, you certainly won't need to buy printers that are on the market now, for technology that you don't know will exist - and if it will, what type of printer it'll need and such.

You CAN, however, create patterns for clothes on a computer and then cut the fabric in other to later sew the pieces together. But for that you don't need a 3D printer. And you need to have the fabric already in existence...

Sorry if I'm not understanding you right or if I'm raining on your parade, but the whole idea just kinda confuses me.

No, you're not confusing me at all. This is exactly the kind of information I need, so I thank you.

Of course I realized that it's possible that the reason I've been having trouble finding resources to do what I plan to do is because they don't exist yet. In fact, it's possible that I will need to work with someone to create them, once I find the right developer who's interested in the challenge. Of course you're right about not buying anything before the technology I want is available, though I want to start making furniture right away, specifically designs based on a fold-up wooden table I have and a shelf that has pegs underneath it near where it meets the wall, and a bar for hanging clothes underneath. It's an excellent piece that does a lot in a small space and, in fact, it'll be best to make it out of something durable, as I want to use them in a tropical coastal environment, that's very hard on organic materials, and on most plastics, too.

Maybe I will go ahead and get an application to submit clothes to a programmable sewing machine, as I'm not the best seamstress in the world, nor do I want to be. I just want better clothes to wear, as do many other people.

I just remembered another thing that made me so excited about printing fabric--I guess you didn't see any stories about this development by Disney Research Labs: http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/printed-teddy-bears/

re: printing cardboard

There are public printers who are alternate to Shapeways who are printing in "wood" which actually looks like bound sawdust to me at least - but that may be a good place to start developing your furniture ideas. (I don't think I can post a link here as Shapeways seems to really frown on such links in "their" forum, which ultimately is probably to their detriment IMO.)

Re: Fabric

Maybe something like this would work for you: https://youtu.be/hf_rf6bGvhw - especially perhaps in nylon or some other material that is, as you say, not available yet.

Best of luck!