3D Knitting Machine
This 3D knitting machine can knit the next home textile (furniture) item you plan to buy. The system works like a 3D printer, using yarn to create the design and provide a prototype of your idea. It can produce the furniture you want using only yarn.
The prototype of the machine, created and developed at Carnegie Mellon University, is transforming conventional woven fabrics worldwide into a new form of knitting system capable of producing various 3D objects.
This 3D knitting machine, like a printer with knitting needles, can produce your products and create a complex, layered weave of different fabrics. In this type of weaving, anything you envision, such as slippers or a beautiful traditional sofa, can be knitted and produced.
If, in the future, the people responsible for managing and developing this project can make more adjustments to its structure, they could present new and varied furniture with different weaves.
Robot expert and Ph.D. student Hiroshi says the device is designed to create what the concept of Saadi represents in the human mind. A computer science student at Carnegie Mellon explains that, unlike conventional knitting systems, where fabrics are created by interlocking loops in a flat fabric system, this 3D knitting machine weaves multiple layers of circular fabric on top of each other, creating a dense knot at the center of each weave, allowing it to produce various shapes.
Building the Circular Knitting Machine
Hiroshi first came up with the idea over a decade ago while working on his master’s thesis project on digital structures at Keio University in Japan. He was exploring the concept of building customizable, modular 3D structures, similar to emerging micro-robots that can connect and disconnect like Lego. He says, “I thought knitting could also be a customizable structure because you can unravel it and turn it into something else.”
After finishing school and finding a job, he couldn’t let go of the idea for a 3D knitting machine. So, in 2018, he applied for a project grant, quit his job, and started building a prototype to automate the circular knitting process. In 2022, he joined Carnegie Mellon and continues his Ph.D. at the Robotics Institute, refining the process so that his device can create a wide range of different circular knitted objects.
Hiroshi sees this device as the first step toward a type of reversible manufacturing tool in the textile industry that can use simple materials to automatically build and reconstruct objects like furniture.
He says, “My dream is to have a 3D circular knitting machine worldwide, so you can send home textile data to it. That way, if I return to Japan, I won’t need to bring the furniture I bought in Pittsburgh. I just send the data, and the furniture will be recreated in my home textiles in Japan.”
Building the 3D Knitting Machine
To bring this concept to life, Hiroshi works under the guidance of James McCann, an assistant professor at the Robotics Institute and leader of the Carnegie Mellon Textile Lab. McCann says Hiroshi’s idea is a complex but achievable shift in textile machinery, which has been in use for over a century. “We’re still making the same fabrics we were making 100 or 200 years ago. The machines we use are the same ones we used at the beginning of industrialization, with only minor changes.”
For the 3D circular knitting machine, Hiroshi’s prototype adds a new function to what he calls a holder, or a kind of frame that can take a layer of knitting material and place it in a way that another knitting layer can be woven into it. Hiroshi explains, “This is the main challenge we need to solve in this research.”
Home textiles are the short-term application of this project. McCann says, “I think this is an achievable challenge in the next few years, and it will fill a space we didn’t really have before. We don’t have large 3D printers that can produce soft objects well. There’s no device for producing volumetric textiles. So, furniture experiments have been promising. Hiroshi has already produced a cubic four-legged sofa and a pair of shoes, but he says other volumes are just as feasible.”
The 3D output also means the machine is very large. Hiroshi’s prototype, built at Carnegie Mellon, is nearly the size of a washing machine and features two gears that control the entire process, along with special knitting hooks and needles. Both Hiroshi and McCann predict that smaller versions with advanced materials like carbon fiber and metal alloys will be possible.
Part of the challenge is ensuring that the machine can operate with the minimum amount of yarn possible. Ideally, it could explore two modes: unraveling the knitted structure and knitting again with the same yarn. Fortunately, researchers only need to focus on the constructive aspect of the process, not unraveling and reusing the yarn. “Unraveling a knitted circular fabric is really simple,” says McCann. “You just pull it. As long as we minimize the number of yarns in a product, you won’t need a machine to unravel it. Probably an eager cat would be enough.”
Source: fastcompany.com
