Had not heard of this before ... had examined how 'smart' fabrics would need to be maintained. Intriguing direction. Quasi textiles.
Leveraging a 3D Printer 'Defect' to Create a Quasi-Textile
MIT News By Becky Ham
A graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jack Forman, created a tulle-like textile by controlling a common defect in three-dimensional (3D) printers. DefeXtiles are based on an under-extruding process developed by Forman called "glob-stretch," in which globs of thermoplastic polymer are connected by fine strands, producing a flexible and stretchy textile very similar to a woven fabric. The new textile, created using a standard $250 3D printer, can be sewn, de-pleated, and heat-bonded. Said Forman, "This is exciting because there's a lot of opportunities with 3D printing fabric, but it's really hard for it to be easily disseminated, since a lot of it uses expensive machinery and special software or special commands that are generally specific to a printer."
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