Designing with 3D Printed Textiles

Abstract

This paper describes the findings and results of a design project with the goal to design a wearable garment using 3D Printed textiles, which not only has functional or environmental superiorities, but also experiential ones. The approach that was adopted for this project is a recently developed method on Material Driven Design (MDD), which suggests a number of steps to design meaningful products when a chosen material is the point of departure. As this method has not yet been applied on a project involving additive manufacturing, another goal is to explore how the MDD method can be used in a project where AM is the primary production method. For MDD, this means that the material that is usually the starting point, should now be a combination of material, structure and process (MSP), and that it is important to understand how these aspects influence each other. The final MSP concept can be locally varied to create property gradients, which results in a range of slightly different MSP’s. These materials have been embodied in the design of a corselet, which utilizes the different properties of the MSP. A number of recommendations has been given for the development of future 3D Printed MSP’s.