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15. Wildcard week

Weekly Summary

  • Shrink Fabric experiment with UV printer.

Assignments

  • Design and produce something with a digital fabrication process(incorporating computer-aided design and manufacturing)
  • not covered in another assignment, documenting the requirements that your assignment meets, and including everything necessary to reproduce it.
  • Possibilities include (but are not limited to)

Shrink Fabric experiment

Wool has a property of shrinking called felting, so I tried to see if I could create an uneven fabric using this property and a UV printer.

I had a experience of spinning wool yarn.

And I threw the long pants away that made by wool, because I washed it in laundry machine with hot water. It became short pants and too tight to wear…><

So I know that wool shrinks with hot water.

What I used

  • Wool gauze
  • Illustrator
  • UV printer

I design the pattern of ammonia structural formula.

Exported “pdf” data

Move to Versaworks. But I can’t see anything on “Special Items” in this pdf data.

Detail of how to use Varsaworks in week11 documentation

And answer is on these videos

I changed the name of swatches color on Illustrator.

Gloss

Swatch Name : RDG_GLOSS

Color Type : Spot Color

You can see “GL” now.

White

Swatch Name : RDG_WHITE

Color Type : Spot Color

Print white and mat gloss 4 times

Finishing print looking (almost 120mm)

add the hot water

and Knead the fabric

Shrink the fabric (90mm)

But It looks not really effective the UV printing.

So I tried to 3D printing on Fabric because I saw these documentations

Export the svg data on illustrator.

And import the data on Fusion 360.

Select “insert from mu computer”

Select a file > Open

Select XY axis

Press “Finish Sketch”

Press Extrude > Distance : 0.5mm

Export

Select “.stl”

I used PLA filament because of color. This is the only grayish color that our Lab has so far.

And put the hot water too. but is it not really changed…

Also tried stretcher fabric from T-shirts.

But it’s not stretch enough…

I asked my sister who studied Textile in collage how to make strong shrink with wool.

She told me I should use Laundry detergent and dryer.

So I followed her.

Washing with laundry detergent.

and went to coin laundry in town to use dryer.

And UV printing one looks good!!!

3D printing wool weren’t good.

Why does wool shrink when washed? The answer lies in the properties of wool scales. Scale is a scaly substance on the surface of wool that opens up when it is wetted by washing. When the scales become entangled with each other in this open state, they shrink and become hard. This is called felting.

When the scales are rubbed by scrubbing or exposed to hot water, they become felted, which causes the wool garment itself to shrink.

So I think detergent is helping to be felting.

What I learned

I learned flexible ink is better for wool fabric shrink. Because shrink power isn’t that strong. 3D filament might be too hard for this way.

And it seems important the pattern size and design.

Appendix

Last update: June 4, 2022