Integrating additive manufacturing with traditional knitting for functional textiles
Team: Xin-Ting Liu, Heidi Woelfle, Brad Holschuh (PI)
Program: Wearable Technology Lab
We propose a novel method for manufacturing customized functional e-textiles in which we combine the strengths of both additive manufacturing (AM) and traditional textiling (TT). Specifically, we are investigating the feasibility of creating 1D yarn-like filament with variable material properties (elasticity, conductivity) using AM methods. This will then be fed into a traditional knitting machine to produce a novel textile. Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is used to create knittable functional filaments via AM. PDMS exhibits exceptional electrical and mechanical properties, enabling its employment for various e-textile uses.
To characterize the ideal properties of PDMS for forming solid knitting structures, we knit PDMS filament combining a monomer and a curing agent at different weight ratios of 10:1, 10:1.5, 10:2, and 10:3. We also evaluate the knittability of filaments with varying thicknesses at different weight ratios. The results show that AM-produced PDMS filament with a thickness of 18GA (1.024 mm) at a 10:3 weight ratio can be successfully knitted using an E6000 Passap knitting machine, and work is ongoing to produce spatially-varying functional properties in this filament for subsequent functional textile creation.
Keywords: Additive Manufacturing, Knitting, E-textiles, Smart Fabrics
Funders: UMN Minnesota Robotics Institute (MnRI) seed grant
Other Collaborators: Prof. Michael McAlpine
