Wearable electronics and 3D printing are hot tech of the day. Combining both of them will create smart gadgets the smarter way. This exclusive article will highlight some latest technology trends in fashion and fabrication.
Wearable technology is the name given to clothing or accessories that incorporate digital elements, whether practical or for purely aesthetic reasons. The famous Google Glass technology is one of the examples. Another latest trend worth talking these days is 3D printing, a process for making a physical object from a three-dimensional digital model, typically by laying down many successive thin layers of a material. Today’s 3D printers are great for building plastic stuff, things like toys and musical instruments and even shoes or gadgets, textiles or jewellery. Colliding the 2 technologies gives amazing products manufactured superfast and with ease. It’s no surprise that more and more companies are becoming involved in the wearable technology market. ResearchMoz, market research reports collection, predicted that by 2018 the global wearable technology market will reach approximately $5.8 billion. Similarly lots of peoples are joining the talk about 3D printing and its projected use in wearable gadgets and electronic textiles. It’s not all about the way these things look, however. Ergonomics plays an important role in the design and production of wearable technology. Director of Product Design at zero360, Luke Guttery commented that “Comfort is a really important factor in sustained engagement, so being able to rapid prototype these is a key part of the development process. The Objet flexible material is very durable and is as good as casting, which is a massive plus, as it’s quicker to produce.” If time is money, the use of 3D printing to create wearable and textiles is a worthwhile investment as it takes only a few hours to print one smart wristband or health monitoring jacket. This flexibility from 3D tech allows for many different multi-material design variations to be prototyped at the same time. Beyond the timesaving, there is also less material wasted when producing the wristbands in this way, as per an estimate, there is approximately an 85% savings in material used when compared to casting as a production method. Whether used as a method for prototyping or to create a finished product, we can expect to see more 3D printing in the process of creating wearable technology, significantly expanding both the ergonomics and the aesthetics of these functional fashion statements. Another prominent application area 3D tech found in wearable is E-textiles. E-textiles, also known as smart garments, smart clothing, electronic textiles, smart textiles, or smart fabrics, are fabrics that enable digital components (including small computers), and electronics to be embedded in them. Many smart clothing, wearable technology, and wearable computing projects involve the use of e-textiles. Electronic textiles are distinct from wearable computing because emphasis is placed on the seamless integration of textiles with electronic elements like microcontrollers, sensors, and actuators. Furthermore, e-textiles need not be wearable. For instance, e-textiles are also found in interior design. Companies like People Footwear are selling footwear with 3D printed portions to a mass audience. No longer restricted to one-offs, 3D printers, when optimized for the task, are proving to be sufficiently fast and consistent for middle tier mass market goods. Company founder Damian Van Zyll De Jong, an experienced footwear designer, realized that 3D printing not only expanded the kinds of designs he could offer his customers, but would cut down on waste as an added benefit. Even students are creating 3D wearable. One of the great promises of 3D printing is how it distributes the capabilities for product creation to smaller companies or individuals. A perfect example of the “production to the people” concept is Nadir Gordon, a fashion design student in Panama. When tasked with creating a futuristic look for a bathing suit, Nadir dove into 3D printing with gusto. Working together with 3D printing expert Jonathan Guerra, the pair created a flexible mesh with 14 parts using a mid-level 3D printer, the MakerBot Replicator 2. After several hours soldering the sections together, the pair had created a haute couture bathing suit combining technical fabrics and stylish design. This article will illustrate you some of the innovations in E-textiles and wearable gadgets from 3D printers.
Myths and Challenges
A common desist from detractor about 3D printed wearable is that the finished products are often compromised because of inconsistent quality, and cannot be produced with the same variety of textures as traditional fabrics. The trend, however, is towards 3D printing becoming more of an option for creating never before imagined fabrics, even if they are custom created rather than mass produced. MIT professor and Media Matter founder Prof. Neri Oxman pushed wearable tech another step into the world of merging organic and inorganic materials with her Mushtari project. Employing a Stratsys Object 500 Connex3 advanced printer, capable of producing wearable from multiple materials and at a high level of consistency and finish, Mushtari merges living organisms into the structure of the micro tubular fabric. By printing a flexible structure of tubes, approximately 1 mm to 2.5 cm in diameter, Professor Oxman, with the assistance of Stratsys R&D, developed a fabric and garment that would allow micro-organisms to thrive. Adding to the impact of the already futuristic attire, Oxman chose bio-luminescent living forms to inhabit the fabrics interior matrix. The end result is a living, shimmering fabric, lighting the way to the vast possibilities high-level 3D printing creates for fashion, space exploration, defense, and almost any other human endeavor.
Flexible 3D Printing at Nanoscale
Korean engineers have created a system for 3D printing ultra-thin fabrics down to 0.001 mm for both electrical circuits as well as wearable applications. Professor Park Jang-ung of the Ulsan Nation Institute of Standards and Technology made the breakthrough with his team. This development casts aside a critical barrier for using 3D printing in electronics: resolution. Printed circuits demand high density fabrication that until this development was largely impossible with standard 3D printing methods. Now that the resolution required in the most precise manufacturing arena in the world – integrated circuit production (IC) – is available from 3D printing, new fabrication options are possible now. 3D circuits could eventually supplant the 2d systems loaded with connectors. Entire matrices of chips would be possible because the 3D printing system scales in directions beyond typical lithographic systems. Besides allowing for high resolution 3D printing, the new system, called “3D electrohyrdodynamic inkject printing,” can produce materials without resorting to extremely high temperatures. High temperatures created another stumbling block to implementing 3D printing in the IC environment. Temperatures high enough for printing, were too high for the substrates and the existing circuits to survive or for maintaining quality standards. The new methods circumvent this issue by relying on technology similar to inkjet printing without requiring substrate materials to be near the melting point. Instead, Park’s new system can produce 3D wearable at room temperature. Textiles and standard plastics can now be applied directly to human skin with this process, or created to adhere to a formed mold.
3D Printed E-Textiles
Applying 3D printing methods, the research group iWatch has developed a bracelet combining a power amplifying antenna and an RFID chip for tracking the bracelet, and anyone wearing it, throughout the country and perhaps soon, the world. The bracelet is more in line with the promise of 3D printed wearable because it is produced as a finished product, not as a group of 3D printed components. All the electronics are embedded using a multiple head printer that is specially designed with a turret for rotational printing. By integrating the entire manufacturing process, from bracelet fabric, batteries, signal processing, RFID chips, and antennas, into one 3D printing process, the bracelets can be reliably produced without assembly steps. This level of 3D printing sophistication enables rapid production of the bracelets. Finally a mass produced product combining 3D printing, wearable, and electronics has reached the goal of end-to-end 3D fabrication. By combining all the steps into one process, 3D wearable, with or without electronics, can reduce labor costs, increase design flexibility, and get unique products to market in weeks instead of months. The bracelet is only the beginning. Developments on the way include bracelets with more advanced and flexible chips capable of handling many of the same tasks as smart phones.
V-MODA 1st 3D printed personalized wearable
A pair of headphones would be pretty much ordinary these days, taking into account the number of portable devices that we own which are able to play back music, with the smart-phone being the primary device of choice, while some of us would make use of a tablet to get the job done. However, when it comes to choosing a pair of headphones that will suit your needs, it does get a wee bit more tricky than just waltzing into a store and dropping some coin. If you would like to stand out from the crowd, the folks over at V-MODA seem to have something up their sleeves that might just change the industry, where it will be the first 3D printed personalized wearable technology in the world. The company looks to reinvent itself once again by offering custom 3D printed shields in a wide range of materials including stainless steel, plated, raw and precious metals. Needless to say, when you go up the scale of the material used, so too, will the final sticker price – and if you do not have multiple zeroes in your bank account, perhaps it is time to give it a rethink. The Forg3D materials are inspired and sculpted in V-MODA’s design studio in Milano, as these 3D shields are made in NYC and the USA. Customers can customize their headphones on the V-MODA website by choosing the base color first, before making a selection of their 3D shield material of choice, prior to settling on a design and monogram or upload their own design. Among the precious metal shields include commissioned works of art, making them the ultimate symbol of bespoke luxury.
3D printed wearable technology goes commercial
Electronics experts at the University of Kent have teamed up with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) to print a wearable device using 3D printing techniques. The collaboration, facilitated by Kent Innovation & Enterprise at the University brought together Kent’s leading expertise in antennas and RFID technology and CPI’s capability in printable electronics. Dr Benito Sanz Izquierdo, lecturer in Electronic Systems at the School of Engineering & Digital Arts provided the design and 3D Printing of the wrist band, whilst the printing of the antennas were produced at CPI’s National Centre for Printable Electronics. The purpose of the collaboration was to produce wearable wireless devices tailored to individual requirements. These devices would benefit the health services where patients and customized equipment can be located using the existing Wi-Fi networks. The technology could also be used to improve wireless communication of wearable sensors. Printable electronics is an emerging technology that opens up a host of design opportunities for future electronic applications in wearable electronics. The integration of flexible form factors increases the freedom for product designers to embed technology and functionality into their wearable designs, creating the opportunity for new, innovative components that are wireless, smarter, interactive, conformable, thinner, lightweight and rugged.
Conclusion
Concluding 3D printing applications story is nearly impossible. We can only say 3D is a technology having endless opportunities unexplored.
