Stratasys announced a new 3D printer specialized for 3D printed fashions, the J850 TechStyle.
While 3D printed fashions have been around for over a decade, most of the activity has been of an experimental nature. Most of these experiments haven’t really panned out.
But one area that seems to have stuck is the notion of 3D printing directly onto fabric. This technique involves tightening down a piece of fabric on a 3D printer bed and then printing on top of it. The polymer is infused into the fabric, mounting it permanently.
Several experiments have taken place using this approach, perhaps most notably in recent times by Susana Marques, who has refined the fabric 3D printing technique using FFF technology.
But there’s one major company that’s been investigating this technique for several years: Stratasys. Almost three years ago the company demonstrated a fabric 3D printing system during New York Fashion Week.
Unlike Marques, Stratasys used their PolyJet system instead of FFF (or, FDM, in their case). The PolyJet process involves fine inkjet heads selectively squirting photopolymer resin on a surface, followed by a pass of UV light to cure each layer as it prints.
In the 2019 demonstration, Stratasys apparently took a stock J750 full color PolyJet 3D printer and stretched fabric over the print bed to achieve fabric printing.
Evidently their experiment proved well, because now they’ve designed an entirely new platform specifically for this type of 3D printing: the J850 TechStyle. They say the device provides:
“Full-color, multi-material capabilities for designs that can be printed direct to fabric, garments, footwear and luxury accessories delivering results that are not possible with traditional methods.”
Stratasys said it is “powered by 3DFashion technology”, which is presumably their set of software, protocols and procedures to implement fabric 3D printing.
The J850 TechStyle seems fairly straightforward from a hardware point of view. As you can see in this image, the device prints on a sheet of fabric, which according to the specifications is 460 x 360 x 50 mm. It’s attached by stretching it across the build plate and tying down with a specialized collar, as shown here:
Note that the Z-height of the J850 TechStyle is quite low, and that’s because you would rarely 3D print anything very tall on top of fabric because it is flexible and you could create a tangle when flexed.
The J850 TechStyle is able to handle the entire Vero family of PolyJet materials, along with the latest Agilus30 materials. The latter is most interesting, because they provide flexible properties in addition to the full color spectrum. This means that with the device one could 3D print flexible structures on fabric.
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About the Author: Kerry Stevenson is passionate about 3D printing and has written thousands of stories on 3D printing technology at Fabbaloo.