Fashion Designer'S Favorite 3D Printing

3D printing technology may be strange to our ordinary people, but this technology is now quietly changing the way many fashion designers work. In the next 5 to 10 years, perhaps in less time, designers will no longer have to scratch their heads to choose clothing materials, and do not have to consider what kind of tailoring a garment needs. They only need to paint their design ideas on the computer and choose the fabric they need, and then hand it over to a 3D printer.

　 Entry into garment production

Francis Bitonti, a fashion designer, joined the idea of Architecture Application in today's mature 3D printing technology and applied it to the production of clothing. This change has brought amazing results, such as fashionable dress or wearing dancers.

"Some people call this fashion a cheat." Francis Bitonti said he used to be an architect, then turned to be a designer and played a 4 inch biopolymer net between his fingers with the founder of the luxury fashion studio.

Bitonti set up a studio for "summer 2014 new skin" at Ravensbourne college in Greenwich, London, and taught students to design and produce garments with 3D printing technology. Bitonti said: "in the next ten years, this fashion will have a better development."

　　 Movie star sexy dress

Bitonti and Michael Schmidt, the designer, designed the world's first set of 3D print gowns and handed them to actress Dita Vantes for interpretation. She said she liked this kind of work very much. The whole skirt is hollowed out so that the skirt is not so heavy - the total weight of the skirt is 11.5 pounds, and the skirt with the skirt is close to 80 pounds. But she is very satisfied with the dress. She prefers retro wind. This dress is designed by the golden ratio of Fibonacci in thirteenth Century. Before the dress is printed, the designers have modeled the skirt, which makes her feel very good, and it fits her body very well.

Schmidt has designed many skirts for Lady Gaga, so this dress is crazy at first glance. And Bitonti is mainly responsible for the creation of the skirt, so that printed nylon can not be too good to wear. This skirt is completely fictitious in the creation stage. Schmidt completes the design of the whole skirt through his iPad, and Bitonti divides the whole skirt into 17 parts and 3000 interfaces to print separately, so as to ensure the whole skirt can perfectly fit the human figure.

Next, it was printed. The skeleton of the skirt was printed by powdered nylon 3D from the printing company Shapeways, then carefully coated with glossy black paint, and then 13000 black crystal crystals were embedded on it. The biggest challenge of creating this skirt is that the material itself is not ideal. The hard part of the material is smooth and sexy, and the curve is the most difficult part of the design. When the tower moves, the curve of the skirt changes at any time, so the skirt needs to be divided into 3000 parts that can be independently moved to ensure that when wearing this skirt, it can walk at random.

　　 Simple operation and low cost

Over the past ten years, technology and fashion have been quietly integrated, and the idea of adding 3D printing technology among the two is the greatest progress. Although it sounds very sophisticated, but the actual process is quite simple, Bitonti said, when we want to design clothes, hats, shoes or bread bags, we only need to sketch the design plan with software, then save it in a SD card, transfer the text to the 3D printer, select a printing material we need, such as pure cotton, knitted, etc. Finally, press the 3D print button, our design work is easily presented. The whole process takes several hours, and the printer needs to be heated to 230 degrees Celsius.

At present, the process that describes this very relaxed is still in the prototype stage. For example, we can only print a vase on the condition that the fabric and color are very limited, but this method is indeed a faster and cheaper option than before. "In 2007, when I first started this work, the cost of the machine we used was 100 thousand pounds, and now our cost is about 1700 pounds. The cost of clothes has dropped from 50 thousand pounds to 2000 pounds, sometimes even less than 2000 pounds, which is undoubtedly a beneficial attempt for a fashion designer, because the demand for labor can be greatly reduced in the process of design. Bitonti said.

　　 3D printing design fashion becomes a new fashion

However, the practice of Bitonti has not been generally appreciated. He does not have the learning background of fashion design, but chooses to cooperate with designers to complete fashion every time, but he does not shy away from it. He thinks that fashion can be printed and all fabrics can be copied.

Today, Bitonti technology has gradually entered the fashion industry. In twenty-first Century, he began working with Katie Gallagher, a designer. He later met with Shapeways3D printing company and co operated with his 3D product. In 2013, he agreed to cooperate with the Ace Hotel, and completed the first 3D dress with designer Michael Schmidt. At that time, the "Dita Vantes" phenomenon was triggered.

Herpen has been using 3D technology to express his works for Lady Gaga since 2012. He also introduced a new production line this month. It can be seen that using 3D to complete garment design is rapidly becoming a fashion. He said: "in the next ten years, this fashion will have a better development."

　 3D technology will be used more widely in the future.

For Bitonti, everything is not limited to this. He has greater ambitions. In fact, based on the development of computer design and 3D printing, designers need not be restricted by materials. They can reproduce leather, skin and even fur, so that they can accurately fit the size of the models in the process and complete the mass production and customization technology.

Can two ways of fashion and printing coexist? People still care about the source of clothes. "In 5 to 10 years, I think a lot of casual wear can be completely printed." Bitonti said. If we can achieve this development naturally, the luxury market will be in a predicament. Mass production will be exclusive, and designers' responsibilities will be reduced to a sketch artist. "I think the future is preparing for this change." "This is the next logical step," Bitonti said. "What can the technology without restriction do? For example, in other areas, music, social life, movies and so on. As long as we continue to complete education, we can achieve our goals in the future.

　　 Navigation blind rod

Navigation helps people find their way, so how can blind people navigate? Designers find inspiration from navigation, and design a navigation blind stick for blind people. It includes guiding bricks, chips and sensors.

When a blind person walks on a guiding brick, the chip inside the brick can be identified with the sensors on the blind stick. The message is then sent to the user's wireless headset to tell him where he is. Users can also navigate to their destinations with blind sticks.

However, the implementation of this idea requires a lot of money to lay up guidance bricks, so maybe this design is not suitable for public facilities. However, as a concept of helping the blind, its creativity is beyond doubt.