Wildcard week

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.
  • Documented the workflow(s) and process(es) you used
  • Described problems encountered (if any) and how you fixed them
  • Explained any problems you encountered and how you fixed them.
  • Explained any problems you encountered and how you fixed them.
  • Included original design files and source code
  • Included ‘hero shot’ of the result

3D printing "fabric"

For this week I decided on 3D printing fabric like material. I was inspired by this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW_l6PvyC3c&t=176s

The way it works is surprisingly easy: You create a shallow 3D model of a part of the sewing pattern and import it into Cura. In Cura, you tweak the settings so that only the infill is printed. This lets you work with all of the different available infill patterns Cura has to offer and it's super easy! :)

I started by sketching out this bag in Fusion.
Then I extruded each part individually to get seperate bodies that I could send to Cura. Each part has a thickness of 1mm.
Choose 3D print.
And select the desired body.
Fusion will automatically open it in Cura.
After applying the right settings it looks lice this in preview mode.
Download the Fusion file. Download the Cura profile directly.

Or have a look at this table including all the important settings.

Essentially what these settings are doing is making the printer print just the infill (with a wall count of 4, but no top or bottom "wall"). This way, you can use the different infill methods to create a woven like texture.

Version Name Definition
4 fabric_cura_profile ultimaker_s5

Key Value
adhesion_type none
layer_height 0.2
initial layer_height 0.2
print_sequence one_at_a_time
infill_pattern zigzag
infill_sparse_density 25.0
retraction_enable False
speed_print 60.0
top_bottom_thickness 0
wall_0_inset 0
wall_0_wipe_dist 0
wall_line_count 4
wall_thickness 0.8
zig_zaggify_infill True
I am using TPU. TPU is a type of flexible filament. It belongs to a class of materials known as elastomers, which are known for their rubber-like properties. TPU filament is highly elastic.
Loading it onto the Ultimaker. Generally speaking, it's better to have a direct extruder when working with TPU (because it's so flexible). But at the time, I only had the Ultimakers available, which have bowden extruders. I was advised to choose the smaller Ultimaker 2's, because the distance between extruder and nozzle is smaller than with the S5's.
Note that this filament extrudes very easily, it might come out of the nozzle even before the print is even starting.
Fo this test print, I chose gyroid pattern.
Flexibility test! Came out quite nicely. It's very flexible and even feels a bit soft.
I chose Zigzag as my infill pattern afterall. I liked it's appearance better and it also held together better than the gyroid infill.
Peeling it off is super satisfying and super easy.
All of the parts printed and layed out on my kitchen counter top.
I aligned the seams next to each other.
And then melted them together with a soldering iron (at about 280°C, can be less hot as well)
Here we go!
Worked very well! And it holds together very nicely.
Cool! Gotta do the rest of them.
It's done!!
Quite nice for a first try!
It cannot hold too much weight though. This is about 500g. 2kg is probably the maximum.