17. Wildcard week

3D printing on fabric

For this week I decided to try out something I had in mind for a while: 3D printing on fabric to later termoform.

I had a very clear idea in my mind: a flower bowl.

It took several tests and tries, but I made it happen and loved the result. Here are the steps I took:

• First I doodle a small version of the flower in tinkercad with the free hand tool and gave it the right dimensions.

• I exported the file as STL.

• Imported the STL in Cura to slice it for printing.

• Started printing as usual and paused mid-print.

• Pasted a square of some fabric just by the corners and continued printing



*Clearly the fabric was not secured enough.

• Did the same print, pause and this time secured the fabric all around the edge before resuming the print.



*This time it came out better, but once I pulled the fabric a little, it came off.

• I decided I needed a more porous fabric, so I got one:

• I repeated the small flower test: printing half, pausing, adding the new fabric and resuming the print.



*This time it worked!

• Then I had to try the termoformig, so I heated up the little flower and gave it the final shape:

• Having all steps clear, I went on and designed the final bigger flower in InkScape:

File here.
• Again, I gave the right dimensions in TinkerCad.

• Exported the STL and opened it in Cura for slicing.



*I noticed the height was too much, so I went back and made it thinner in TinkerCad to come back to Cura with the right measurements.


Final STL here.
• I repeated the print, pause, add fabric, resume steps for this final design:

• Finally I heated up the flower and gave it the bowl shape:

Final result: