Development and Print of Clothing through Digitalized Designs of Natural Patterns with Flexible Filaments in 3D Printers

Abstract

This study proposes clothing development by digitalizing natural patterns with flexible filaments in 3D printers. The motivation to carry out this research was the similarity and evenness features of fractals. For this purpose, three natural exemplars have been selected and subsequently digitized: Snowflake, Honeycomb, and Flower of Life, with line variants and infill density at 12%. The garment was printed with Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and Thermoplastic Elastomer (TPE) in two 3D printers: Anet A8 and M3D Crane Quad. Lastly, the combination of filaments, printers, line variant, and infill density resulted in forty-eight (48) samples. Two tests were carried out on the printed patterns for the research: The elongation and tensile strength test. The elongation test consists of applying a variable force to each exemplar in order to obtain the percentage of its elastic limit before reaching its fracture point. The tensile test applies a variable vertical power to each design to determine how it will behave under particular pressure. Results show that the snowflake pattern with line variant obtained the best performance in the elongation test compared to the tensile test. Subsequently, four clothing samples were printed with TPU and TPE materials on the two printers mentioned above. The garments are composed of twenty-nine (29) pieces respectively which were connected with a 3D pen. Finally, the item of clothing was worn by five volunteers of different sizes, as shown in the following pages.