FollowingThe PumpkinI was inspired by@sewprintedto create my own 3D-printed TPU fabric prototype and sew it into a jacket. Fabric panels are printed with infill and walls (where you want seams), but without ceiling or floor. There were a couple of phases to the project:

Phase 1: Experiment with Infill. In order to gain a solid understanding of what infill patterns and percents would function best as a fabric, I printed a bunch of mini squares. Some I knew wouldn’t work even before printing, but in the name of science I wanted to print each selected infill pattern at each selected infill percent, just to see. I was looking at a couple of factors: reliability of print, flexibility, and aesthetics.

Phase 2: Finalize Prototype. I settled on two different infill patterns and printed them in larger squares to see how they would behave, as well as see how the percentages translate. I did one with a tight grid infill and another with looser triangles. I did two because I thought it would be fashionable to have different options for different panels. The triangles could not be used for a panel that would be under stress, but as an accent piece it was gorgeous. I also did some stress testing and found that it could more than withstand the average wear, and any deformation was easily repaired by hitting it with a heat gun, which caused it to return to its original shape.

Phase 3: Translate Pattern. With the help of a friend from home who sews, I was able to find a pattern for the jacket and size it to myself correctly. The tough part—or rather, tedious part—was translating that pattern into vector and then .stl and .gcode. Since I was using Prusas to print, I used PrusaSlicer to slice it. This whole process took 20+ hours.

Phase 4: Print Jacket. This is where the issue arose. The first couple of panels went well, and then the printers stopped working. They were under a lot of stress in a busy student-run lab (CollabLab), and they very badly needed maintenance. This shut my project down completely, as when they were back online, they printed differently. I had been inadvertently relying on the spotty nature of the extruder to get the infill together enough to not fall apart, but with enough minor gaps to be extra flexible and realistic-feeling. It really behaved like a fabric.

I would love to return to this, but with the sheer number of print hours and the very technical nature of the prints, I want to wait until I can afford to build my own printer (hopefully very soon!). Armed with the much more in-depth understanding of printers that I have now, almost two years later, I am more than confident that I can create another fabric prototype I am happy with. I will likely be choosing something other than a jacket though, since Massachuesetts weather rarely blesses us with light jacket days.