Transcription
In general, 3D printing has improved so many areas of our lives. However, I was asking myself one weird question: can we also 3D print our own fashion? I want to answer that question with this video because, with 3D printers that cost less than $200, you can generate limitless ideas.
To make it clear from the beginning, I do not consider myself a person with a good sense of fashion or design, but there are people out there who could probably create great things with that idea. That's what the community is all about—people improving each other's designs and ideas.
Now, let's make our own art piece. If you want to have your own logo or a photo on your T-shirt, you can open the program Inkscape, import your logo or drawing, and all you have to do is make it bigger. Make sure that the side ratio is correct, and then click on "Path" and then "Bitmap Trace" (I think it's called that in English). After that, you can delete the picture, and you'll have your logo in an SVG drawing. Therefore, just save it as "logo," and now you have it.
Next, we can open Fusion 360 or whatever CAD program you like to use. Start with a new sketch and open the SVG data. I'll make it somewhere around the 50 mm range. I don't know how the original symbol will turn out, but let's see. Now we extrude it to 0.4 mm, which is exactly two layers when we use a 0.2 mm layer height. Then, you can export it in STL or 3MF; in this case, I will export it to 3MF.
Now we can open Bamboo Studio and create a new project. You can import the 3MF data. At this point, it might not be correct, so we can lay it on the print plate. Now it's correct, but we have to mirror it because when we melt it onto the T-shirt or cloth, you have to mirror it here. Then, you mirror it again on the drawing. That's why we have to mirror it here.
All I have to do now is adjust the settings. I don't know if you have to do this, but I did it, and I had the best results with these settings. I changed the set offset to -0.01, so we have 0.01 mm less depth for the first layer. I changed that value and then switched to a generic TPU. Now, I have to change one thing because I would like to have a skirt on it. You can remove it later on, but I think it works best because then you have a little space to melt a bit of the TPU. If there are some leftovers on the nozzles, it will be on the skirt. I will make two loops for the skirt, and then you can remove that. That has given me the best results.
Let's see how it turns out, and then I'll send it to the printer. Now the fun part comes! I use some baking paper and some 3D leg spray to get some adhesion on the baking paper. You can probably also use hairspray; I don't know, but this works for me. You can also try it with hairspray. Then, I used self-designed clips to hold the baking paper in place. You can put one here and one there to ensure it's properly positioned and get a little tension with the clips. You have to be careful; I can also upload the 3D data of these clips, but they're just simple clips. Just be cautious because there's not much space here.
So, I used some 3D leg spray, positioned the baking paper, and let's see how it turns out. I also turned down the flow calibration, so just basic leveling and printing. You can look here at how close it is with the clips. The printer will do the vibration compensation and auto bed leveling. I canceled the flow rate calibration, so as I said before, the printer does the normal auto leveling, even with the baking paper on it. For the last prints, it worked very well.
Now, it has made the first line. One thing I do is slow down the print to 50%, especially when printing with TPU; it's better to print slower. That's why I do the skirt—to have some leftovers here. But let's see how the print turns out.
Now the print is done! You can remove the leftovers and also the skirt, and now we're ready for the melting onto the cloth or T-shirt. I marked where I would like to have the logo, and meanwhile, I heated the iron to the maximum setting, where the temperature is the highest. The iron is heated up, so I remove these, and the first step is to slightly melt it onto the cloth. I try not to press it too much into the cloth because it can get too squishy.
Let's see if I think it was already enough or a little bit too much here. Not too much—so that was perfect! Now I take the shirt and carefully turn it inside out. The trick is to heat it for 40 seconds at maximum, and then give it one slight press. The T-shirt should hold very well and look great. Let's see if this happens. You can also repeat this process a second time if you feel like the edges are not really melted into the plastic.
It still looks fine, and you can see on the edges that it's really melted into the cotton. That's exactly how we want the shirt to look. I think this process works surprisingly well, and I have done a few washes with the shirts, and they still look fine. You can definitely make other pieces like caps or hoodies. Feel free to write your ideas down below, and if you have any questions, just ask!