The 3D Printer as a Sewing Machine:
Untaming Fabrication Narratives for Material Exploration
To address this limitation, our research explores reframing 3D printing through a posture we call untaming. Our investigation specifically focused on how printers work with textiles. Through a Research through Design (RtD) approach, we developed a new custom controller designed to enable the rhythmic coupling of maker, machine, and material movements, and uncovered new working relations of 3D Printing on textiles.
We detail our journey as a situated practice in this pictorial, where we document our design decisions alongside a physical swatchbook that captures these “untamed” actions. Ultimately, this work offers untaming as a provocation for Making-HCI scholarship, demonstrating a tangible instance of how we might question our agencies with materials in digital fabrication.
Sheryl Teng
Clement Zheng
3D Printing's Prescribed Imaginary
Commercial desktop 3D printers today are affordable to many and increasingly “plug-and-print,” offering features that reduce fabrication errors with increased speed. This however, streamlines the design process into a standard model > slice > print pipeline where we plan outcomes for the machine to make.
This diagram traces the taming and domestication of 3D printing. It maps early developments following patent expiry, combined with shifting media influences, eventually solidified the sociotechnical imaginaries that define the technology today.
We see textile design and our sewing machine metaphor as an area adjacent to 3D printing that can destabilize prior expectations of the technology and invite the maker back into the loop.
Our early explorations led to two key developments:
1- The use of the embroidery loop to tension fabric
2 - A software that allows us to work with g-code directly and repeat actions
Our custom 3D Printing Controller
To support on-the-fly control, we built a custom 3D printing controller that prioritises working directly with g-code and allows us to design snippets of g-code that can be repeated as "actions".
This controller enables the machine to stay receptive to our commands during both run-time and idle-time, supporting the dynamic creation and execution of actions rather than a sequential, one-script-at-a-time flow.
Our Emerging Machine-Material-Maker Relations: Taking a Line for a Walk
Even when the machine repeats a standardized path, the line’s wandering and pauses on different materials yield differently.
1B - Varying Z-heights
Our 3D Printing Workflow
Untaming as a Situated Stance