Fashion brand Pringle of Scotland has incorporated laser-sintered nylon fabric into garments for its Autumn Winter 2014 collection, shown yesterday at London Fashion Week.
Pringle of Scotland collaborated with material scientist Richard Beckett to create a series of 3D-printed fabrics for the collection using selective laser sintering (SLS).
To produce textiles that could move like traditional cloths, Beckett chose specific machinery that could create the tiny nylon parts needed to keep the material flexible.
“I used an EOS Formiga P100 SLS system due to its ability to build at high definition, one of the few systems that would allow you to build such complex movable parts at this size,” Beckett told Dezeen.
The printed sections were then handwoven into the knitwear through small hooks on the underside or stitched on top of the wool.
Bands of the material formed cuffs for jackets while larger elements created diamond-shaped Argyle patterns across pullovers and sleeveless tops.
3D-printed garments have previously appeared in Haute Couture fashion collections by designers such as Iris van Herpen and a bespoke garment for Dita Von Teese, but Pringle of Scotland claims that this is the first time the technology has been used for ready to wear.
“I wanted to explore a move away from the more sculptural costume approach of such pieces, towards a more material, haptic-based approach,” said Pringle of Scotland head of design Massimo Nicosia.
The Autumm Winter 2014 collection was presented during this season’s London Fashion Week, which concludes tomorrow.
New York-based designers Barbara Busatta and Dario Buzzini have created a range of tableware that can be printed out at home on a desktop 3D-printer and used straight away.
The Machine Series is made on a MakerBot Replicator printer, a machine aimed at the consumer market that melts plastic filament and extrudes it layer-on-layer to build up objects in a process called fused deposition modelling (FDM).
The set by Italian designers Busatta and Buzzini of ICOSAEDRO is specifically designed so there is no scaffolding, seams or flash to remove in order to finish the objects, and they become fully-finished products the very moment they are removed from the 3D printer.
“Normally, in order to hide imperfections and seams, objects created with this classic FDM technique require an extra treatment,” explained the designers. “These products have been designed to minimise the finishing touches needed to make a 3D-printed product look acceptable.”
The geometry and cross-sections of the vessels reduce the risk of flaws and deformations while giving the collection a distinctive aesthetic.
Busatta and Buzzini wanted to challenge an assumption that 3D printing only produced poor results and had little application in the home.
“The focus of this exploration has been to elevate 3D printing – a technology that is very much talked about but is relegated to either cumbersome amateurish results or overly expensive artistic applications,” they said.
The range features 12-by-8-centimetre containers in straight or tapered versions, available in black, red or yellow, with a variety of different colour combinations for the lid and base.
The designs for the Machine Series are all open source and available to download online. Busatta and Buzzini want anyone to be able to modify, improve and alter the designs using different materials or other types of additive printing.
Alternatively, the entire collection can be purchased from the Machine Series website, and will be presented at the Makerbot store in New York.
Speaking about the development of the dress at the Wearable Futures conference in London in December, Bitonti says that developments in computer-based design and 3D printing mean that designers are no longer limited by their knowledge of materials.
“The separation between what you can simulate and what you can physically model is gone”, claims Bitonti, founder of New York luxury fashion studio Francis Bitonti Studio.
Francis Bitonti with Dita von Teese wearing the 3D-printed dress he and Michael Schmidt created for her
Von Teese premiered the 3D-printed dress designed by Bitonti and designer Michael Schmidt at the Ace Hotel in New York in March last year and it became one of the most talked-about fashion stories of the year.
“One of the things we’ve been noticing is that materials are becoming media. I’m not operating on materials, I’m operating on animations, I’m operating on video, I’m operating on pixels and polygons. [The design process] is a lot closer to creating a hollywood film than it is making an aluminium cylinder,” says Bitonti.
Modelling the Dita von Teese dress
Possibilities are now limited by the designer’s imagination rather than material constraints, Bitonti says. “What I’m finding every day is that I can make anything I can draw. And I can make something behave any way I can imagine it behaving. The gap closes every day.”
Modelling the Dita von Teese dress by Francis Bitonti
Prior to launching Francis Bitonti Studio, Bitonti trained as an architect. He says this background proved useful when designing the figure-hugging dress for the American model and burlesque dancer Dita von Teese.
Manufacturing one of the pieces of the Dita von Teese dress
“I found that developing a second skin for the body wasn’t really that much different from thinking about a building facade. It’s about breaking up shapes in pretty much the same way,” he says.
The seamless dress, which he developed last year, was made out of 3000 unique moving parts made using selective laser sintering (SLS), where material is built up in layers from plastic powder fused together with a laser.
Manufacturing one of the pieces of the Dita von Teese dress
The two-day Wearable Futures conference explored how smart materials and new technologies are helping to make wearable technology one of the most talked-about topics in the fields of design and technology.
Detail of the DIta von Teese dress
Bitonti is not the only designer exploring the fashion possibilities of 3D-printing.
Once illuminated, these faceted grey 3D-printed lamps reveal colourful interiors derived from everyday images (+ slideshow).
The Dazzle lamps by Belgium-based designer and programmer Corneel Cannaerts were 3D-printed in colour using a technique developed by the designer himself.
Using a Z Corp colour printer and a gypsum-like powder, each of the shades is printed in grey on the outside, while brightly coloured patterns are applied to the internal polygon mesh.
The process of additive manufacturing allows the colours to bleed into the material, creating their distinctive glow.
“The dazzle lamp prototypes look at the potential of 3D colour printing to embed different states within an object,” explained Cannaerts.
The volume of the lamps is deformed in such a way that the centre of gravity falls below a triangular opening, allowing room for the light fitting and LED.
For each lamp, two custom fittings are printed so the lamp can be used as either a pendant or standing lamp.
“The irregular triangulated shape is derived from the mesh – still a necessary file format for 3D printing,” he continued. “It looks similar but different depending on the angle you look at the lamp.”
Cannaerts has developed his own custom software application to allow anyone to change the shape and size of the lamps.
His software also allows anyone to source an image – a still from My Little Pony in one example – and the software converts it into a coloured mesh.
At present the application only runs on desktops, but Cannaerts is planning on building a web and mobile version allowing anyone to customise their own shapes and colour schemes.
The faceted forms of these 3D-printed wireframe bowls and vessels by French designer Michaël Malapert are inspired by the Japanese art of origami.
The bowl, plate, vase, candle holder and desktop container are based on archetypal forms, which are subjected to a digital process that turns the surfaces into faceted shapes.
Malapert said the folded paper forms produced by experts in origami influenced the angular geometry of the designs, which are reduced to a structural outline.
“[The] Dark Side creations are inspired by numerical modelling softwares reinterpreting and focusing on origami know how,” explained Malapert. “Only the graphic skeleton of the object is maintained, while the material is reduced to the minimum.”
The products can be used as containers, lanterns or ornamental centrepieces.
They are printed by laser sintering, where a polyamide powder is scattered then fixed with a laser one layer at a time. They can be ordered in red, yellow, green, blue, black and white.
Dark Side is the second collection to be launched by Michaël Malapert through his M Family website, where customers can either order the objects to be printed or download a file to print them themselves.
Here’s some more info about the Dark Side collection and the M Family label:
Dark Side collection
Michaël Malapert launches a second collection based on the shape of the object and explore a new functional vocabulary. 3D printing is now part of our everyday life. In opposition with the first collection, DARK SIDE creations are inspired by numerical modelling softwares reinterpreting and focusing on Origami know how (a traditional Chinese art of paper folding). Only the graphics skeleton of the object is maintained while the material is reduced to maximum.
This collection revisits various typologies of the basketry activity showing the dark side profile of these objects. By proposing DARK SIDE, Michaël Malapert shows that 3D printing allows to produce wired solid structures with delicate curved lines.
The M Family
The M Family is a brand in the form of an Ecommerce website, launched on September 2013 by the French designer Michaël Malapert. This website was announcing a first 3D Printed objects collection called Nature Plugs. Thanks to SCULPTEO’s know how, these objects are proposed with two acquisition options: by purchasing the print file itself or by ordering and receipting of the object already achieved.
This revolution allows everyone to choose colour, material, size of the object and hence its price. Democratic and ecological, this technical production by addition of layers opens a new repertoire of forms to use and produces no waste. As the recent explosion of manufacturers and the rapid development of relay spaces FabLab, communautarian websites offering online download print templates are still missing to this equation. Therein lies the approach of The M Family.
Michaël Malapert
Fell into the pot of design when he was young, Michaël Malapert then turned to interior design and waited patiently for a technological leap justifying the add of objects in the landscape already really saturated of material production. He launches this year The M Family and decided to create a brand of arty objects based on 3D printing and the start of a revolution that overturns and renews the approach to the world of design.
The M Family offers objects between decoration and contemporary art that define interior landscape. These objects interact with their environment. Michaël Malapert does not provide objects with a mechanical function but with an aura that tells a story and offers to our eyes a break to escape. In the coming months, The M Family will open a community aspect on new collections, inviting artists, designers, musicians, cooks, to create or propose one or more objects that have meaning for them, available for download on the website.
Maison&Object 2014: perforated 3D-printed shades diffuse the glow from lamps in this collection by Italian designer Alessandro Zambelli.
Each lamp in the Afillia range features a laser-sintered nylon shade created by Italian 3D-printing company .exnovo. Alessandro Zambelli designed a set of three shades punctured with patterns of small holes, which follow mathematical patterns found in nature.
“The shade reveals a web of essential geometric configurations, capable of capturing the light and concentrating it in a spherical, compact and luminescent aura,” said the designer. The diffuser shapes include a sphere and two narrower squashed forms, one with a flatter end than the other.
Swiss pine is used for the base of the table lamps and the bulb socket in the pendants. All have green cords to connect them to the power supply. The designs were exhibited at this year’s Maison&Objet trade fair outside Paris, which finished yesterday.
Rather than slotting onto chains, these 3D-printed pendants by Italian designer Maria Jennifer Carew hang from the edge of the wearer’s clothing (+ slideshow).
Maria Jennifer Carew stripped the pendant necklace down to its most essential component and created her LessIS collection of simple geometric designs that clip onto garments.
“Today accessories are a key element in any outfit, so I decided to focus on the concept of necklace where often the most important role is played by the pendant and not by the chain that supports it,” she told Dezeen.
Each design is based on a continuous strand of material, which loops back on itself into a thin element that hooks behind a lip of fabric.
Shapes range from circles, triangles and squares to more complex polygons. Some pieces have extra bars within the outer edge for added decoration.
The jewellery can be clipped onto the collar of tops, and can also be placed over the placket of a shirt or into the top of a chest pocket.
The pendants are printed in bronze, brass and black or white nylon.
News: US publisher Riverhead has collaborated with 3D-printing firm MakerBot to create the first printed book sleeve.
A desktop MakerBot Replicator 2 was used to print the slipcase for Korean-American writer Chang-rae Lee’s futuristic novel On Such a Full Sea, released on 7 January.
“We think the 3D-printed slipcase for On Such a Full Sea is a work of art, and one we are very proud to have helped create,” said MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis.
The case was designed by Riverhead art director Helen Yentus and members of MakerBot’s in-house design team.
The title lettering is extruded and stretched across the white printed sleeve, as a continuation of the flat writing on the yellow hardback tucked underneath.
“What I like about this project is that it re-introduces the idea of the book as an art object,” said Lee. “Content is what’s most important, but this [3D edition] is a book with a physical presence too.”
The technology was used as an experimental proposal for the future of books covers, which the designer says are becoming less significant as digital books are more widely read.
“We’ve talked a lot about what’s going to happen to books and cover designers if covers aren’t necessarily going to be the focus anymore,” said Yentis in a film about the book. “We’re looking for new ways to present our books.”
Only 200 copies have been produced with the printed covers, each signed by the author. These limited editions are on sale for $150 (£91) and the book is also available with an alternative hardback cover, as well as an electronic version.
When Dezeen spoke to Pettis in 2012, he told us that cheap 3D printers mean manufacturing can again take place at home – read the full interview here.
More information from the publishers follows:
3D-printed slipcase for hardcover of Lee’s latest novel On Such a Full Sea
In an unprecedented and innovative format, award-winning and Pulitzer Prize–nominated author Chang-rae Lee debuts his new novel, On Such a Full Sea, with a first-of-its-kind 3D printed slipcase, printed on a MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer.
This highly anticipated new novel, set in a dystopian future America, comes as a signed limited edition hardcover with a custom 3D printed slipcase, designed by Helen Yentus and MakerBot. Only 200 of the 3D printed slipcases will be sold.
“What I like about this project is that it re-introduces the idea of the book as an art object,” said Lee. “Content is what’s most important, but this [3D edition] is a book with a physical presence, too. Of course I hope what’s inside is kinetic, but the physical thing isn’t normally meant to be. This edition feels as if it’s kinetic, that it has some real movement to it. It’s quite elegant as well.”
In talking about the 3D printed slipcase that was made on a MakerBot, Lee noted, “It’s all about changing the familiar. That’s ultimately what all art is about. That’s what we all do as writers.”
Though it won’t be released until January, On Such a Full Sea has been lauded and highlighted in all of its early reviews: “An astonishing feat of encapsulated genius from the inimitable Lee… Brilliant… A heart-thumping adventure,” said Library Journal. Booklist said On Such a Full Sea is “Always entrancing and delving…. Takes a truly radical leap in this wrenching yet poetic, philosophical, even mystical speculative odyssey…. Electrifying.” And Kirkus described the novel as “a harrowing and fully imagined version of dystopian America… Welcome and surprising proof that there’s plenty of life in end-of-the-world storytelling.”
Chang-rae Lee using a MakerBot Replicator 2
Chang-rae Lee is a deeply influential writer who tells stories about race, class and immigrant life in America. He has built a dazzling reputation as “a spellbinder” (Hartford Courant), “a master craftsman” (Washington Post), and “an original: (Los Angeles Times), and has been honoured with top prizes, including a PEN/Hemingway Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Asian American Literary Award; been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; nominated for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature; and selected for the New Yorker’s “20 Writers for the 21st Century” list.
“We are honoured to work with Chang-rae Lee and Riverhead Books,” noted Bre Pettis, CEO of MakerBot. “We think the 3D printed slipcase for On Such a Full Sea is a work of art, and one we are very proud to have helped create.”
On Such a Full Sea is a bold and thrilling departure from Lee’s previous novels. In On Such a Full Sea, Lee has turned his acute eye toward the future of America. The story takes place in a chilling dystopia, a century or so beyond the present, where abandoned post-industrial cities like Baltimore have been converted into forced labor colonies and populated with immigrant workers. China is a distant, mythical memory. Environmental catastrophes have laid waste to much of the world, a cancer-like disease has infected the entire population, and stratification by class and race is more pronounced and horrific than ever. The fate of the world may lay in the hands of one tiny, nervy girl named Fan, an enigmatic and beautiful fish-tank diver who jolts the labor colony by running away.
Epic in scope, masterful in execution, and page-turning right to the shocking end, On Such a Full Sea fires on many levels: it is simultaneously a heart-stopping survival adventure across the wasteland of a wrecked continent; a deeply moving story of a girl’s first love; and a searing, frightening commentary on where America may be headed if we don’t strive to do better. The Boston Globe writes that Lee “asks the crucial and abiding question: How do we live a kind and decent life in this woeful world?” On Such a Full Sea imagines a future in which that question is more urgent than ever, and challenges us to ask what we need to change today.
Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction; A Gesture Life; Aloft; and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Selected by The New Yorker as one of the “20 Writers for the 21st Century,” Lee is professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and a Shinhan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yonsei University.
London architect and designer Daniel Widrig has printed a stool from a mixture of sugar, plaster and Japanese rice wine.
Widrig designed the shape of the Degenerate Chair using techniques typically employed in the creation of complex three dimensional characters for movies and computer games.
The shape of the stool was first modelled using 3D tiling software and optimised by removing material where it wasn’t structurally essential, before the resulting form was broken down into a high-resolution array of three dimensional pixels, or voxels.
When the 3D printing partner Widrig had lined up to produce the stool using an industrial stereolithography printing process pulled out of the project, he turned to an open-source recipe that combines plaster, sugar and sake to create a material that can be used in standard 3D printers.
“The recipe we used is based on existing research but we developed it further, because the original recipes usually result in parts that are too rough and fragile for high resolution prints,” Widrig told Dezeen. “To our knowledge it is the first time a 1:1 working product of that scale has been printed this way.”
Widrig’s studio used its own Z Corp machine to print the stool in sections that were limited to the dimensions of the printer. The parts were then assembled to create a fully functioning piece of furniture.
The designer added that the process results in huge cost savings, but is discouraged by the manufacturers of 3D printers who prefer users to purchase materials direct from them. “To give an idea of comparative cost, one litre of original binder is around £200, while a litre of Japanese rice wine is £8,” he pointed out.
Structural concept image
With further research, Widrig believes the organic binding material could offer an affordable alternative to existing expensive systems. “We are currently developing this process further since, in our opinion, it is the only way to 3D print for free,” he claimed.
Structural concept image
The furniture is on show at an exhibition about the relationship between digital architecture and the sciences called Naturalising Architecture at the FRAC Centre in Orléans, France, until March and has recently been added to the centre’s permanent collection.
News: American manufacturer 3D Systems has unveiled the world’s first 3D printers for food at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The Chefjet and Chefjet Pro are the first professionally certified, kitchen-ready 3D food printers, on display at 3D System‘s stand at CES this week.
The machines were launched with the pastry chef in mind, and so far they can print in milk chocolate or sugar in three flavours: mint, cherry and sour apple.
“The machine uses an ink jet print head that’s just like the one you would find in your desktop 2D printer,” explained 3D Systems’ Liz von Hasseln. “It spreads a very fine layer of sugar then paints water onto the surface of the sugar, and that water allows the sugar to recrystalise and harden to form these complex geometries.”
A “digital cookbook” will allow those unfamiliar with CAD modelling to generate and print complex objects with ease.
The ChefJet is aimed at the domestic market and will retail at under $5000 (£3000). It produces single-colour edible prints for items like sugar cubes and cake decorations.
The ChefJet Pro will be priced at under $10,000 (£6000) and produce full colour prints with a larger build volume. Both will be available in the second half of 2014.
In 2011 the husband-and-wife team wanted to try and “print” a birthday cake so they hacked a 3D printer and, after much trial and error, successfully printed a mini cup cake with cursive sugar script. The couple, who both have backgrounds in molecular biology, then launched The Sugar Lab in July 2013 and it was acquired by 3D Systems in September 2013.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
