Week 17, Wild Card Week¶

Assignment¶

Design and produce something with a digital 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 wildcard week examples.

Wild Card Work¶

To explore a new digital fabrication process I am working with the embroidery machine we have in our lab. We have a Brother Entrepreneur 6-Plus PR670E Embroidery Machine.

This machine has 6 needles, and can embroider patterns up to 300mmx200mm. With the 6 needles, 6 colors of thread are loaded at the same time. Designs can be made with more colors, but that would require re-threading during the embroidery.

Threading machine¶

The colors I will be using were not currently loaded into the machine. To load, I select bobbins with the desired colors. To do this, remove the thread from one path (by gently pulling it). Then, put the new bobbin on the pin, and then follow the path for the numbered position. This requires going through the holes, and tracking the numbered path.

Top part of threading path. Can see yellow thread following path #6

Once the path is traced, the needle needs to be thread. To accomplish this, push the thread button below the control screen. The specific needle does need to be selected. The thread is wrapped below the two extended pins, and then slide between the metal pieces on the foot. Pushing the thread button again caused the pins to retract and automatically thread the needle.

Pins extended for threading (closest needle)

FabLab Logo¶

For my embroidery, I have a jeans jacket where I will be adding patterns to the front. This will have a “Fab Lab” theme.

Above the pocket on the left side, I will place the Fab Lab logo. I took an SVG of the logo, and imported it into Inkscape. I rescaled the image to be 60cm x 60cm (my desired output side). Then, I made the path be 1mm and of a different color. The additional colors help with choosing stitch types. This was exported as an PNG with 600 DPI.

This PNG was imported into the Brother PE-DESIGN software. This software is used to configure for the embroidery. In this software, I made the paths be satin stitch, while the interior is done with a fill stitch. There are only three colors used, but the satin outline mades for a better final embroidery look.

The image is imported into the software, and then choose the auto punch option. This automatically makes an attempt to convert the PNG into embroidery.

With the imported image, the colors are automatically converted to stitches with Auto Punch. The software guesses the right colors. It also tries to guess the stitches. It already has the satin and fill stiches in the right place, but the colors need to be fixes.

With that, the satin stiches were changed to match the color of the fill. The statin stitches were also aligned to occur after the fill, which will give a better final look.

Then, the jacket needs to be set up for embroidery. The pieces are the hoop, backing material, and the jacket itself. Since I am doing a 60x60cm design, I am using our 100cmx100cm hoop.

To get an idea of positioning, I put the hoop on the front of the jacket, and can see that it aligns well.

With the front placed, there is a holding ring, which holds both the jacket and the backing material. I put that on firmly in the desired position. The back ring was tightened with a screw driver after making sure the jacket is taunt across the hoop.

Then, the hoop is placed on the machine. As I putting the jacket in upright, I then will be working with an upright image. This is an important thing to note, particularly if someone wanted to put a design on a low portion of a garment.

Since I want the logo to be as close as possible to the pocket, I used the screen on the machine to make the image as low as possible in the ring.

Then, I could use the “embroider” button to start the machine

After completion, the hoop is removed from the machine.

This looks great.

Pseudocircuit¶

For the other side, I am making a logo for a circuit. I want to then add conductive thread, and have LEDs that flash.

To start, I made a psuedocircuit in KiCad. This has three traces for LEDs, and a position for the microprocessor. This is the resulting PCB.

I exported the PCB as an SVG and imported it into Inkscape. I removed the unnecessary elements from the drawing, notably the pads from my phantom microprocessor.

I followed similar steps to make the embroidery file as described in the logo section.

I made a test run on the embroidery machine, and could see the position of the incoming traces. Since I will be wiring a LilyTwinkle processor from SparkFun on the front, I realigned the traces to fit well with this small board.

Again, I made a different outline color to help with stitch selection.

My first thought was to have the embroidery machine do the conductive thread. I loaded that into the machine, and tried to have it run the paths. That quickly jammed, and it was not going to be the way forward. It is difficult to see in the image, but this wouldn’t work well. Therefore, I will need to hand sew the connections after completing the embroidery.

Like above, I started the embroidery with the logo. Again, the outline will be in satin stitch, as well as the circuit paths. The background is fill stitch.

During the run, the bottom bottom ran out, and replaced it. When replacing the hoop, I accidentally pinched the jacket, and ended with a corner stitched to two layers of the jacket.

For that, I needed to use a seam ripper to get it back apart.

I then used conductive thread to make my actual circuit. I used conductive thread, a LilyTwinkle processor, five LEDs from the Lily system, and also a coin battery holder in the back.

I hand stitched along the circuits, adding LEDs to the gaps. After completion, the path with single LED lit, but those with two in series did not. It seems that the ones in series are not being lit.

To show a working circuit, I rethreaded the LEDs, connecting three, which are all in parallel. With that, the LEDs blink as expected

Hero shot: Blinking LEDs

Design files¶

PE-Design files from this work: