3D Printing on Fabric with Ultimaker
A Hybrid of rigid and flexible.
Many makers and designers have 3D printed on fabric. At Wearable Media, we have also done a few tests. Here is the process and what we found works.
We started testing by printing directly onto a mesh fabric by attaching the fabric to the printing bed. Unfortunately, this does not work. For 3D filament to be attached to the fabric, we need the PLA or whatever filament you are using to sandwich the fabric. Please see the diagram below:
This is a simple test of one unit printed on fabric. Please see the left with the base brim layer. To the right, you can take the base layer of the brim off to only kept the 3D printed part we need.
Below documented the full process of printing a larger area of the triagle unit Jermey has created on Rhino.
The print was successful! The 3D printed material gives the fabric a little more structure. Yet the fabric keeps the 3D printing flexible. We also tried a different design, where there is less space between the 3D printed units.
In general, this is an effective way to add 3D printing on fabric directly without glue or sewing. However, depends on the type of printer you have, you may be able to print faster than the Ultimaker.
Please see the software and hardware we have used in this experiment. Also, check out a few other projects that my co-teacher, Gabi from Three Asfour and Travis Scott created that are using more high-end printers.
3d Modeling Software: Rhino v. 6.14
Printing:
Software: Makerbot v. 3.10
Material: PLA at .3mm Height
Hardware: Makerbot Replicator2
Software: Ultimaker Cura v. 4.0.0
Material: PLA at .3mm Height
Hardware: Ultimaker 2+ and Ultimaker 3 Extended
