DescentBB

I've seen 3d printed dresses before. What caught my eye about this one was that it appears possibile to make it on a cheap home 3d printer (ie: sub $500, like something in the reprap family).



it's made of this hexagonal chain-mail stuff, which can be printed in one piece with no assembly required



http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:341707 here's the dress
they appear to be printing large reams of the "fabric", to then make into dresses later? weird, surely they just print the whole dress as one piece. i'm confused.
The hex chain mail is printed as one piece, you don't need to assemble.

OK, SO WOW. that was the point of the post: I'M SAYING WOW: WOW. A whole dress, that's cool.

but how did they print that though? it's huge, too big to fit flat on a normal consumer 3d printer bed. Or can you print it folded somehow.
(?!)

i can't really understand the explanation on the discussion page:

...I use 4 Flashforge printers with PLA with dual extrusion mode. ( 8 nozzles working at the same time, 27 days.)...

huh? are they talking about multiple centrally controllable nozzles all printing at once liek this?

anyway, assuming they didn't just print small sections and clip them together afterwards (coz BORIIIIIING), i wonder if they used a conveyor belt (or even a printer on wheels) to have a continuous build platform. It's not something you see a lot of, pretty cool if they used that. I reckon you'd print continually and have the conveyor belt going continually, printing a few segments at a time, have multiple layers going at once so it's all one big contuinuous print like a continuous pour concrete technique.

ok OP post is over, clicking SUBMIT now
rambleramble

U gonna look perty in that there dress. :p

Honestly, I wouldn't mind 3d printing armor clothing instead of having the stuff look like fabric. Space marines! Attack!

You would like it. I notice that you can see some details through the hinges between the hexes. How about a set of 3D printed BVD's for you boys instead?

Yeah, you can still pick the lines up... which is going to translate to being able to see underwear through the dress. I don't think I would wear that if I were female... at least not by itself. Though plastic scale-mail doesn't sound like the most comfortable thing on bare skin anyway...

translucent dresses aren't new, if ur feeling modest: skin-toned underoos or a slip. You don't have lines on your skin, so no-one really notices (well... your wicked tats might show through).

actually i think the red dress is simply made of translucent red plastic (or it's too thin), almost guaranteed to be on purpose. Easily remedied: Look at the green chainmail, can't see through that.
Non-problem

Isaac wrote: Space marines! Attack!

*tau fusion turns space marine into pink mist*

silly marines.

I'd be terrified of the tiny plastic bits clipping pieces together snapping and experiencing a huge wardrobe malfunction.

Fascinating, but the whole concept is simply wasted on women's apparel. I want 3D-printed, space-age armor in Kevlar and high-grade stainless steel!