Automatic Machine Knitting of 3D Meshes

[femto]

What about applying this to making breast prostheses, whether they be automatically or manually knitted? It might allow a better fit and match to the existing shape if a pattern could be generated on a per-patient basis?

https://www.knittedknockers.org/

[beachy]

Things your Grandma said while knitting ... never:

> The function is feasible for machine knitting if its Reeb graph has an upward planar embedding.

[carlob]

Speak for your own grandma!

After mine died I discovered she had studied mathematics under Peano for a couple of years before getting married. Unfortunately the only source I have for this interaction with Peano is an inscription on a Dover book that a friend of hers had gifted her.

Happy international women's day!

[jjcm]

I'd love to see if I can do a 3d scan of my torso and have a sweater knit that exactly fits my frame. It'd be very interesting to see clothing made in this fashion.

[jayd16]

I don't think this would be ideal for clothes, although I'm sure it would be pretty good. Clothes are designed to move. They have pleats and extra space. A perfectly form fitting sweater would have cause stress/stretching as you moved your arms.

[mcphage]

Although, once you gain or lose a few pounds, it wouldn’t fit quite so exactly anymore.

[Isamu]

Didn't know CMU had a Textile Lab! Looks to be under the Robotics Institute, or affiliated. Very interesting, thanks!

[etaioinshrdlu]

This could be very useful for weaving carbon fiber composite parts. Orienting the fibers to make a strong part is quite an art.

[mrarjen]

Indeed, this kind of reminded me a little of the Westworld robot printers. But having a program individually calculate all the orientations and determine the best strength is a just as much of an art.

[IshKebab]

This is knitting, not weaving. Big difference.

[xedarius]

Cool - I can have a Utah teapot cosy for my teapot.

[olliej]

I love these machines they’re so much fun to watch (for me at least they’re still in “how on earth did someone work out how to make this?” Part of my brain)

I recall someone publishing something similar a few years ago - I wonder how this compares?

[ohiovr]

Very interesting. Could make a fun hobby out of it. Maybe use it to construct woven carbon fiber objects?

[Varcht]

Seems like an interesting idea, you can get it to lay up some pretty complex shapes using the common weaves but it is an art/pia. Seems there has been some research into it https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/how-to-knit-carbon-fiber...

[blacksmith_tb]

CF isn't so different from a lot of natural fibers, I would think if you loaded up the knitting machine with bamboo yarn, you could glop resin onto the finished product to achieve something similar to carbon.

[brandmeyer]

The mold is the tricky bit. You need to make your knitting in sections that will fit over the mold. It might be more effective than using strips, or it might just be more expensive.

[johnhattan]

Rather odd that they're only showing the video as a downloadable MP4 file. I didn't see a copyright notice, so I put it up on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/R3Ax7U5dvbc

Note that the video is silent.

[contravariant]

There's no such thing as a copyright notice. There's no need for them, copyright exists automatically on any creative work. What you may have been looking for is a copyright license. These give permission to share the work, possibly subject to certain conditions.

The absence of a license simply means you ARE NOT licensed to share the work in any way shape or form.

Your intentions seem to be good but you may want to reconsider.

[pimlottc]

The link for the video I see goes to Google Drive, which has its own built-in Youtube-like streaming player; is that not what you're seeing?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_XlprMZKhhuk89xsZMMo7Qxv801...

[nv-vn]

Thank you! Couldn't get the link to play on mobile and this helped

[Y_Y]

Does anyone know of service that lets you send in such a design and get the result posted back like exists for laser cutting or PCBs?

[neelkadia]

Amazing! Programmers are needed in each discipline. This is such a transdisciplinary project.

[raj_m]

Looks really interesting. I presume this is accepted to SIG18 ???

[yig]

Decisions for SIGGRAPH 2018 haven't been made yet. This may have been submitted directly to the journal Transactions on Graphics.

[billconan]

how much does a knitting machine cost?

[extrapickles]

They cost about as much as a typical industrial CNC machine tool, so close to $250k installed.