Apr 19, 2016 | By Kira
Loughborough University in the UK and global textile and garment manufacturer Yeh Group have teamed up for an 18-month project known as 3D Fashion, which seeks to design and create 3D printed textiles and wearables—including personalized clothing and 3D printed shoes—that can be made ethically, sustainably, and on-demand in 24 hours or less.
Contemporary shoppers’ obsession with so-called ‘fast-fashion’— the phenomenon whereby ridiculously trendy clothes hit the market faster and cheaper than ever before—is becoming increasingly harmful to our environment. As an eye-opening video by Grist explains, that sort-of-cute $8 t-shirt you bought on a whim may not have cost you very much, but its cost to the planet is enormous.
A single ‘fast-fashion’ t-shirt can require up to 1,320 gallons of water and produce 9 lbs of carbon dioxide, never mind the terrible working conditions of those forced to make it.
To put that single t-shirt into its global context, studies have shown that garment manufacturing generates 1.8 million tonnes of waste material per UK household, with 6.3 billion m³ of water used in the process. Over in the United States, shoppers are buying 20 billion new clothing items each year, while sending 10 million tons of clothes to the landfill, where they can take anywhere between 4 to 40 years to decompose. What’s so ‘fast’ about that?Using 3D printing technology, however, Loughborough University’s Dr Guy Bingham believes he can revolutionize how we design and create clothing and footwear, all via a one-step, zero-waste manufacturing operation.
The 3D Fashion project has seen Bingham, Senior Lecturer in Product and Industrial design, partner with global textile and sports garment manufacturer Yeh Group, headquartered in Thailand, to develop additive manufactured textiles that have the potential to reduce waste, labor costs, and CO2 emissions, all while encouraging local and ethical manufacturing practices.
While 3D printed fashion is not necessarily new, many current processes are multi-stage and require garment finishing. The 3D Fashion project’s innovation, therefore, will be to produce finished, ready-to-wear net-shaped garments directly from raw material. The fact that the clothing can be personalized to the individual wearer's taste and needs using 3D body scanning technology is also important, as people are much more likely to care for and keep a garment that was made just for them than some mass-produced t-shirt available at every mall nationwide.
The aim of Loughborough's 3D fashion printing is therefore to produce truly fast fashion without traditional social and environmental consequences.
“This landmark technology allows us as designers to innovate faster and create personalized, ready-to-wear fashion in a digital world with no geometrical constraints and almost zero waste material. We envisage that with further development of the technology, we could 3D print a garment within 24 hours,” said Bingham.
“Printing clothes using AM will revolutionize the fashion industry worldwide by opening up digital manufacturing to the masses via online retail, bringing a much needed update to 19th century techniques and processes,” he continued. “This modern approach to clothing production helps meet the growing demand for personalized apparel and footwear which through 3D printing can be produced in a sustainable and ethical way.”
Yeh Group is an innovative supplier of fabrics and finished garments that use the latest technologies in custom performance fabrics and the most conservation-minded processes. Its clients include sportswear and intimate apparel customers, including Adidas, Puma, and Victoria’s Secret. It is therefore no surprise that they would look to partner with academia to help support the next generation of high-performance, eco-friendly textiles.
“3D Fashion supports the Yeh Group vision of direct polymer to garment manufacture,” said David Yeh, Managing Director at Yeh Group (Tong Siang). “The Yeh Group is always striving to cut out unnecessary waste and resource use, and support the industries goals of faster to market, creating a manufacturing technology that brands and retailers can install closer to their customers. This is all with no compromise to performance.”
Loughborough’s 3D Fashion initiative is currently being supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s Impact Acceleration Account, and is seeking additional industrial collaboration opportunities to drive research and development of AM fashion materials and technology.
Check out the video below to see the 3D Fashion printing project in action:
Posted in 3D Printing Application
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