 Hello and welcome to the English translation of the talk why 3d printed clothing is not the future Your translators for this evening are dark man and Mary So questions are who's who knows about 3d printed clothing and who's done that before Actually at home so there's not a lot of not a lot of people who've done that before and If so it didn't work too well But a lot of people have 3d printed who of them have thought about printing clothing actually at home so about 10 people have thought about doing that at home and our next speaker Rebecca will Tell you now why that might not be the best idea to 3d print your clothing You can find Rebecca on Twitter under using her handle core first in and she's doing research at the intersection between usual clothing manufacturing of usual clothing like everyday clothing and She also does a lot of She does the technical virtual clothing So I have a lot of fun enjoy the talk. I hope you're gonna have a lot of fun. Let's greet Rebecca with applause I just received post but I'm not gonna let that stop me from doing my talk Welcome to my talk. Oh more more post There's a lot going on on that stage right now. I'm gonna read that later, but I'm happy that the post office seems to be working well So my talk is called why 3d printed clothing is not the future and I'm gonna talk about the what what makes 3d printed clothing and Why it why it's like that and what needs to be done to make it Everyday usable So I'm a clothing technician, which is maybe a weird combination of words So when Clothing is manufactured on the one side. We have the design Did the idea and To put that into a real thing That's a whole different thing So for example, we have a person who comes up with a design they design a dress and Have a nice picture of it. You can see some things but not not too much and they go to production to to a company And tell them make distress place and they're like, okay how how we need a lot of information to do that and Everyone's like what and Yeah, that's where it stops because the production needs to know what kind of fabric do we need What kind of sizes do you need? How many do you need? How many in which size what kind of machines do we need what to put on the on the care instructions? How far is the distance between Between different parts of the dress and that's where where I came in like in between the design and the production so I kind of Do the reality check? What can you what can be done? How can it be done? So it's a lot about materials about quality Where to produce it prices when to produce it all of these question have questions have to be resolved And that's what my job is So this I applied this reality check how can this even went on to 3d print printing? And if you have a look in the internet for 3d printing and clothing Then you can see all these headlines about some news 3d printing will bring a lot of flexibility into the fashion industry or clothing of the future or is the street of the future from the 3d printer or can the 3d printer completely revolutionized fashion 3d was even worse. Oh Yeah, 2020 will all have a printer at home and in the morning We'll print a blower and in the evening we'll melt it down and print a new one But they got a bit careful over time But you can see even from these headlines that there's a lot of hope involved here That's something may change radically that the fashion industry will be unrecognizable And there is a lot of the sustainability in there And sustainability has become a big topic in the clothing industry and well, I'm gonna talk about that 3d printed clothing actually exists. It's nothing new nothing special not completely unrealistic There have been complete fashion collections that have been 3d printed. I'll show you three small examples For example the creations of Danny Pelleck They her final collection in Israel Was made completely via 3d printer. It was a five-part collection There's for example, there's two part ensemble to the right a top and a floor length skirt and the skirt Was printed completely with desktop 3d printers, which means it's made of modules that have about a four size And they're stuck together to form the skirt The special thing about is that it's it moves very well is very flexible because it's made from flexible filament but also because it has this zigzag structure structure that Enables the parts to move over each other when you pull on them It really Jumps it pops up a bit where you pull on it The jacket you see there is the first 3d printed ready to wear a piece of clothing that you can order online It's limited to 100 pieces If you want to buy it you can do that for one thousand five hundred dollars You can Make some decisions like change the color put some writing on the back And then it takes about hundred hours to print and then you have a jacket Another example is from the design collective nervous systems the kinematic system It's made of triangles that are stuck together with hinges So the whole surface is flexible it can be moved, but it's made from hard material So there's like a hard solid plastic it moves it rattles a bit if it moves if you run After a while they made a version That is proof against spying eyes the dress on the right Is made of these triangles but has little flower petals printed on it so that it can't be looked through The third example is this it is the pangolin dress It's made of a structure of different modules that can move into one another and overlap when moving And that allows a limited flexibility So you can move in this dress and the surface will follow your movement The Travis Fitch was working on this Designer working in New York, and I talked to him it. I am a clothing technician. I asked yeah, can I have numbers? And Where do you even get the information that these structures can be used for just what makes you say? Yeah, okay. This is elastic enough to use it as clothing redo lab testing and He was more like yeah, I pull on it, and it's either good or it isn't And so then the clothing technician in me sort of burst through and I thought hey, what am I numbers? And so I offered him to examine these structures to lab testing to find out What's behind all this what are the Aspects of this in numbers and units. How can you express that? So those were three of many examples at fashion shows on the runway. There are a lot more And it's of course clear that these aren't exactly Everyday examples there. These are clothes for a special occasion Custom-made can take months to build made of 300 whatever parts that have to be stuck together But the question is will this revolutionize fashion? so That obviously has to apply to everyday stuff Custom-fit stuff at fashion shows does not in directly revolutionized everyday wear So my question is what does this clothing have to do or have to be able to do to be everyday? Where that we can wear literally every day and for every occasion And to me at this point it's the most important part is that clothing has to be comfortable We can we can express that through Comfort very comfort. There's the psychological part of that which is about trends and individual individuality and that I'm I'm kind of Individualizing myself Wearing a hoodie might fit here, but Maybe maybe a more Different context would would ask for a different clothing And In this context you might feel very comfortable in in one kind of clothing Which you wouldn't wear in a different context and that's a psychological part then there's the next to skin comfort It can be it can be soft or kind of itchy or scratchy. It can cause allergic reactions There's the physiological Comfort which is about About the climate kind of like your body climate it has to keep you warm But at the same time it has to transport your sweat kind of to the outside and And So it can This evaporation must happen through the clothing So and some clothing does this a lot better than others and it's important for us being comfortable in our clothing And the fourth aspect is the ergonomics of the whole thing That's mostly about freedom of movement and that's kind of the thing I focused on The freedom of movement comes on the one hand How the clothing fits how tight how loose it is and Secondarily through elasticity of the material used And that's extremely important since there are parts of the body for example the knees and the elbows Where you have to have a stretch of at least 50% if you Want to perform any sort of useful movements and to do that The clothing has to be elastic and not break If the material used in this place is not elastic then the surface would either bow out or distort So if you have a very tight sleeve and the material isn't elastic and I do this all the time Then it'll sort of take that shape at that point and it won't look nice So we need a material that sort of springs back into its original shape once we straighten out our arm So if the surface isn't elastic at all it isn't actually that good for clothing uses But you can compensate for this with cut if the Piece of clothing is wider. It's the lack of elasticity is not as significant So My question was how can I find out? How these are elastic these 3d printed structures are if I can do that then I can use them consciously in a targeted way to significantly raise the ergonomics and comfort of 3d printed clothing and bring it closer to everyday usability and If you look at textile surfaces like the ones that we wear every day the they implement the elasticity Then there's two aspects the material itself may be elastic. It's usually called in a stand It's awesome. You can stretch it by 300% and it'll spring back And it's used in many many pieces of clothing. So a usual Mix ratio is 98% cotton 2% of the stand and those 2% are enough for the shirt to be Moveable enough to get in there. It can be very tight, but it won't deform or anything after wear the second option is via structure structural elasticity and That is usually done via weaving And if you pull on a surface then the threads will move and they will move relative to each other and Distribute a bit of their thread to their neighbors and that In combination makes an elastic surface with material that isn't all that elastic Cotton fiber for example is the last thing at all, but if you weave it the right way It's a very movable in the elastic surface And if you transfer this to 3d printed surfaces, then you can use an elastic material here for example tpu That's thermal plastic polyurethane Polyurethane is used in LSTAN So it has very similar Aspects and because it is based on the same chemical ground rules Structural elasticity is possible Via you can print a weave But you can also use other shapes such as arches spiraled springs Things you can compress or pull on So that at first you distort the structure and not the material The kind of things you could do with that depends on your printing technology. There are different ones and not all are The same for making fashion for my research. I specialized on two processes So for the one on the one hand IDFLM Method which melts filament. So it it's It's a thermoplastic so it's It's heated up and then it gets it melts and it's liquid and then You can you can design a geometry using that And if you if you have an object with that kind of hangs over Like you see on the left. You need you need some pillars to to help that stand and That structure like the pillar structure needs needs to be built from the beginning and It's in the finished object and you have to remove it afterwards That's no problem. If it's if it's a hard enough material you can just break it off But if it's elastic you can really break it off if you pull on it It's just elongates and you don't really win anything so if you if you try to To build geometries like that With with an overhang That method doesn't really work for it you you don't win any time or get any get anything out of it out of the method like that Functioned later with TPU. No, it's at least not with them. What's so often markets? I didn't catch Good idea, but it doesn't work with TPU for other technologies. You have BPA which can be dissolved in water But those structures don't really fit together TPU needs a very high temperature to melt. I printed that stuff at 215 C But the PVA already started decomposing from the temperature. So theoretically a good idea Right now it's possible with these printers. Yeah, it doesn't fit yet. I am of good hope. That's something new will be developed, but yeah The other process is SLS selective laser sintering It's a powder base printing process where you put layers of powder into your build space and Use a laser beam to melt the grains of the powder together where you need your geometry And then you add another layer of powder and so on So the powder itself is your support material and you can do away with all those columns You at the end you have filled your complete build space with powder and somewhere in there is the structure you printed And that powder can be easily removed later and reused for my research I Tested a variety of different structures the left and the center one are made with the SLS So I had the possibility to add a bit of height to Chain things together And I did that in different sizes The larger and a smaller variant and the smaller variant is obviously a lot more mobile You can really fold that up nicely and move it and these little modules Can be moved relative to each other you can push them together and that's makes it all very mobile With the other process I was limited In my design choice, so it's a bit simpler. This one is based On a diamond pattern that has been extruded into three-dimensional space And at first the diamond structure is stretched before the material actually moves I had this with different variants big diamond small diamond different layer heights To see Which variant has which elastic properties so that it can be decided which factor is the deciding one for the elasticity values I get How can you even test these values? By pulling on it you take a sample strip something like this Put it into your testing machine and the machine will pull on it with a constant speed But the in the software that works with a machine spits out a little diagram you can see it on the right and And the diagram shows you the change in length in percent, so How much it has been distorted and the force used So you can use the diagrams to How resistant the materials against tearing and how much it can be distorted without springing back and spring back Stretching and elastic stretching is not the same thing But if I pull on something and I stretch it It's going to keep its shape because I overstressed it But if it's elastic enough it will spring back into the original shape. Those are two Different numbers that can both be derived from this diagram I did that with all my different variants And you of course you have to do multiple samples and average them out and everything and Then I got numbers and units And so I had these numbers So one thing I have to know is are those good numbers are those bad numbers and For that there is a recommendation by Dialogue textbook Leidung together with the German fashion Association It's not an international standard is not a law so clothing doesn't have to reach these values, but is a recommendation how clothing should behave and what forces It should be able to tolerate. This is a small part of that split by product groups like Pants have to survive different things compared to underpants and if it's a bit looser then You need less pulling force because if it's further from the body it It's not important how much is pulled it doesn't have to conform as well. So I compared these numbers and found out The amount of force needed to permanently distort My structures was okay, but the maximum force before failure was not okay So I can pull on the thing that's awesome, but it's very easy to pull too hard and rip it apart so yeah, they are flexible but the forces if I Move my arm and the thing rips then the piece of clothing doesn't help me much these 3d printed structures are limited in that sense Then I want to have a look at the factors that actually cause this to be elastic or not or how much And what I saw from my numbers is that the size of my elements Did have an influence So the larger variants had better values than these small ones but The big ones don't really look or feel all that much like fabric But the small the smalls are closer, but they didn't get as good numbers and then there was another factor Which was the slicing program? and the slicing program Has two significant jobs First of all, it splits my 3d object up into layers and second of all It details the 3d printer where It's supposed to be in which layer with a printhead. So if you print a vase like this The lowest layer will be completely filled because you want to pour water in there. It's not supposed to leak out So the path from the printhead or the path of print head could look roughly like this It will go back and forth and rose to fill everything completely The second day will be a ring and the printer might be doing something like this. Maybe we'll take another path though there is a lot of different programs and There is a They are limited in their configurability And I had a closer look at it and saw that With my diamond structures the printhead took a fairly particular path. It went Over to this crossing and then back in another direction Under the microscope you can see that it tore exactly here The printer didn't actually traverse the crossing So all the strands are just ever so slightly melted together whenever a new hot strand came their way It's sort of stuck to the other But this trend didn't actually bridge the gap. So that's sort of my point of failure And that's where it tore apart And another variant which is based on basically the same pattern the slicing firm decided to do it differently It decided to go right to the bend in the middle of the diamond So of course the fracture point is now there and the samples look different because they tore in a different place and That explains my low yield strength Because I'm not actually pulling on the solid material But on the places where it's just sort of stuck together a bit and depending on how well that happened This can be easier or harder So the method itself itself already makes some makes the strength kind of low So I've tested eight structures using different variants So you could ask now How do you come up with the idea that now 3d printed clothing isn't a good idea and that other things might be better And I say well Could be and depending on the method you use there's there's boundaries to What how far you can get so here we have to take a closer look actually on to molecules on the molecules itself so different different strings have have different different They have different tensile strength due to the way the molecules are arranged so we have either amorphous or crystalline areas and Those that the squiggles to the right They are supposed to be chains of molecules and where they're sort of tangled together a bit like a Spaghetti, they're not exactly that stable in the areas where they're very ordered They are very solid and the natural fiber Have a tendency to be or to have a high Amount of internal order many crystalline areas. They are very solid They have a high tensile strength from the get-go that my structures do not have and if we're looking at synthetics Then you can influence how hard they are to tear There's different technologies to make fibers and At least one of them is very close to 3d printing in which you liquify or The plastic or the material that you want to use as a fiber and you press it through a nozzle And it turns into five minutes very similar to 3d printing the difference is that You can influence what properties the fibers at the end the degree of crystallization So how much of the thing is crystalline is dependent on how fast it cools The slower you cool cool the fiber the more time the molecule chains have to go into an ordered state So these spinning machines are heated for to cause the cool to be as slow as possible to get Degree of crystallization. There's as high as possible and hence a tensile strength as high as possible We do not have this possibility with 3d printing. We can use a heated print bed But that only infuses the first one or two layers maybe and nothing after that After the strand has been deposited we wanted to harden as fast as possible Since it might just run off to the side and we want to have a certain geometry that we decide we wanted to have it's not supposed to flow apart once it's been printed and When the next layer is added well that only works if the layer below it is already hardened So we can't just keep the thing at a constantly high temperature all the time with the SLS printing. It's a bit different It's a better for making high tensile strength materials And the structures had significantly better results as far as tensile strength goes With synthetic fiber we have another possibility Which is stretching them After they've been spun They are shoved through rollers and these rollers pull on them Apply a pulling force and that Raises the degree of crystallization Because the molecules are aligned and forced to align to each other This also leads to the fiber becoming slightly thinner and it becomes finer softer, but more solid That explains why textile fibers are so much more solid Then but still much finer than what comes out of a 3d printer textile fibers Can also warm you very well by trapping air for insulation purposes you get these little chambers due to the weave and Those can warm us And that's because textile surfaces are made of threads these threads are made of fibers And as you can see on this microscope image, it's this is not some rough carpet This is a microscopic image of a very small piece of cloth. You couldn't even see this with your eye but in all these little holes air can be trapped and You'll be worn by it. The small distances are also possible Important for transporting moisture because sweat can evaporate and go through them so the clothing can warm you and protect you from overheating and Structure small fine structures like this can't be made by 3d printing. We are very limited in fineness and We can't just print tiny air chambers We're still quite limited in that There's a couple things that 3d printed structures just can't do but there's other things that they can do so we can We have a lot of freedom of choice and when we design a thing So Things like bracelets or necklaces or glasses We have a lot of freedom to design that or for costumes in the movie exam for example Black Panther day 3d printed the crowns, which is one example what you could do with that method So you only you only build up material where you need it, which is which is very sustainable in Normal clothing Manufacturing if you cut a pattern from fabric you You usually have like 10% loss of the fabric, which is not a good thing. You lose a lot of fabric there So this is one of the good aspects of 3d printing clothing And you can actually recycle the materials Very well, which is another downside of the normal clothing industry It's very well suited to to to fabricate individual pieces One one of a kind pieces And you can have one product with different Different properties in different parts of the clothing So you could make it thicker for example around the shoulder if you want it more stable there and if you would try to do that With the usual way with fabric you would have to use different fabric there or added fabric and You couldn't just print it in one go like the 3d printing You could also integrate cables LEDs some sort of sensors Well, there's a question mark behind this because it's not really everyday stuff and We can't yet get that in such an advanced state that it's standard One advantage could be that you can make the entire piece of clothing in one single step Right now you have to first make the fabric cut the fabric sew together Maybe dye it those are all different steps happening in different places and If I 3d print a piece of clothing They could just do it in a once-through process But only if it actually fits into the printers build space So if you print an a4 sheet and stick many of those back together Then we're right back where we started where things have to be built out of components Something a bit more complex is this thing Nova systems develop which is a software that digitally folds the dress and it is printed in a folded state Which reduces the build space significantly So somewhere in this powder block you have the dress and you have to sort of Archaeological free it from the remnants of powder clean it and Unfold it, but it's it's a nice way of using the advantage of 3d printing of everything happening in one step But aside from that I still see significant problems There are also disadvantages or challenges such as the tensile strength or lack thereof which is a feature of the process itself We're limited as far as fine structures go So the standard nozzle diameter is 0.4 millimeters and with fibers we're looking at micrometers Those are significant differences and Fineness is important for how something feels on your skin for transporting moisture For warming via trapped air and that is so elementary That these four aspects of comfort just are not happening If the piece of clothing at 3d is 3d printed Time and cost is looking very bad It takes quite a long while to print and it's very expensive So this isn't every day yet. This is custom jobs How to wash or clean one of those things is Has to that has to still be determined How you wash it and if we're talking about clothing we have to talk about how do you close it? You have to get in there somewhere so they have to be zippers buttons hooks eyelets You have to think about that sort of thing if you want to print the whole thing once through So Building fabrics from fibers from threads which are made from fibers right now is not To be beat as far as comfort goes and there are no real solutions for imitating it either the via 3d printing or some other process Or some other arrangement of material On in a different way. This hasn't been solved yet That means that Right now state-of-the-art 3d printed clothing is not only not the future but not even today Because today our stuff is made of textile fibers It works really well, but 3d printed structure. It just can't do that yet That doesn't mean we should stop looking at the problem and whoever said that would work well I'm interested in what worked well, and if there are maybe other aspects involved that I didn't think about here but It should be forgotten that the basic or the basic functions clothing should be forgotten this Art I showed in the beginning is awesome, and I think it's the best thing ever and Research on that sort of thing should be done But clothing is supposed to warm us and it's supposed to protect against prying eyes and Supposed to keep our body climate optimal My hope that with a sustainable process we could maybe revolutionize the entire injury industry or through other that we could do that through new Production processes that's a bit problematic Since the fashion industry is highly problematic. There are many problems ecologically societal problems And putting your hope in a new technology and saying yeah, this will solve everything because it's sustainable And then we're just going to print everything with 3d printer and the sustainability problem will be solved That's yeah, I'm not seeing that So yes, please do the research, but don't forget the basic function and Don't just sort of rest on your laurels that this new innovative technology will solve everything so Revolutionize the clothing industry in all other aspects as well and don't depend on 3d printing solving all the world problems And this I'm done with my presentation and thank you for listening This has been the C3 dingo English translation of the talk. Why do you 3d printing is not the future your translators were And duck man For your information, there will be no q&a since this talk ended basically at just the right second You can ask the better things on Twitter for example a cool system And you could probably catch us somewhere after the talk As far as the translation translation goes we accept feedback at the email address hello at C3 lingo.org Or you can Twitter using the hashtag