Libre de faire, Faire Libre

En janvier 2014, Aaron Rowely lançait la startup Electroloom avec la volonté de proposer la première imprimante 3D de textile au monde. Après un an et demi de développement, la société originaire de San Francisco ouvre aujourd’hui une page de collecte sur Kickstarter afin de financer le projet et soumettre ses premiers modèles pour des tests grandeur nature.

Within the expanding ‘maker movement’ there is a segment, a hub if you like, of creativity that uses a machine to make things following digital instructions. It just assembles a finished object, additively, using only the material it needs. It uses an open source version of technologies that have been around for a long time.

What we are talking about this time, though, is not based on FDM/FFF 3D printing processes. It is called OpenKnit and represents the revolution of Soft Digital Fabrication. An OpenKnit machine is in many ways similar to an FDM/FFF 3D printer, except it makes clothes. It uses needles and a needle carriage instead of an extruder head. The carriage is controlled by an encoder that moves it and knows its exact position at any time. Instead of filament there are three threads, one for each tubular section of the garment (for example two sleeves and a bust section), and three thread guides that move them along

Via CTC