FLEXIBLE yet RIGID | 3D Printed Textile Structures

Funding|  The Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) at Virginia Tech

2014 | transLAB, in collaboration with the DREAMS Lab at Virginia Tech

Collaborators: Borhani, Chris William

Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpL0Y2l_BSI

Exhibition: International New York 3D PrintShow

Project Description: In collaboration with the DREAMS Lab, we worked on researching Flexible Textile Structures with 3D Printed fabrics. Flexible textile structures is an exploration into printed fabrics. The prototypes were generated by Rhino, Grasshopper and SolidWorks CAD software and fabricated with two additive manufacturing approaches, Powder Bed Fusion Process and Fused Deposition Modeling Process. The main design goal was to design a fabric that had both flexibility and rigidity. The fabric could be easily manipulated into a fixed shape due to interference among the links of the printed textile.

This research had potential applications in several domains such as medical, textile and fashion industries. Our team was invited to attend and present the result of this research at the New York 3D Printshow. Also, we involved in a very high-profile panel discussing material development in the field of 3D printed and computational fashion in February 2014.