EXPERIMENTAL DIGITAL FABRICATION (Final Project).

The Collaborative Sweater

Team 2: Me, Cain, Aryan, and Sim

We talked in a group about ideas and came up with using the CNC machine to draw on some fabric and then 3D print some sections of the drawing to highlight them, which will be turned into a sweater. 

Thanks to Cain for organizing all our ideas to streamline what we are doing. 

(Notes Here)

The Patterns: 

The sweater pattern (black lines) was split into sections for each of us to fill out. 

Here is mine: 

The Drawing: 

Okay, so...a lot happened during the drawing of the CNC machine. 

First, the setup was pretty easy. Aryan had set up the canvas by stapling it to a board that we could clamp down to the bed of the CNC machine. Doing a small test, the sharpies drew quite nicely and easily with minimal drag (though there was still some drag...as you will see). 

Though we did have to centre the machine in the middle of the fabric (because that's the way that Aryan set up the file, which is actually nicer than doing it in the corner...because I almost got it dead centre first try (not to brag)). 

One of the major problems that occurred...some of the flaps went off the base board. 

So, for my sleeve, we had to hold up the loose flap so that it would draw properly: though we did hold it a bit too high, so you get to see the lines of where the machine was moving. 

Plus...some of the staples were in the way. Oh well, it didn't cause too much trouble. (You can also see some of the effects of the drag an bunching in this photo with the swirls). Also, another fun thing...the way things were printed with the lines and with the way the sharpie draws on the canvas, it looks like it is woven. 

We also decided to switch colours, so after mine was done, we switched from red to a silver metallic sharpie. However, the silver started running out before the next switch (we wanted the two sleeves to be in red and the torso to be in silver), so we had to switch a bit earlier. 

Interestingly, that created some gaps because the sharpie wasn't put back into the exact same spot. 

Then we come to the other sleeve...

This was a bit of a disaster. 

It was both off the board and off the fabric. Aryan and I ended up having to hold it down so that it would stop going off and bunching up the fabric as it came back. This also happened with one of the stars for Cain's part of the drawing, which I got on video, so think of that but a thousand times worse with Sim's part. 

    

But now Aryan sews it into a garment, and then we'll see if we can print on it. 

The Printing: 

A little bit of crunch time when this happened, but we decided to make some patches for the sweater. 

We kept them small and simple-ish, so that we could get them done quickly in the first hour of class and then get them on. 

Here is my patch (in rhino): 

Ultimately decided, in the interest of time, to let Cain and Sim do theirs first. 

Here is the test: 

here is the real: 

and here it is sewn on: 

And that's the sweater. 

Thank you.