3D BEATING HEART

3d printing and electronics on a heart-centered top

This top was created for the fashion show System Recovery 2.0, held at Fablab Yucatán in December 2017. The inspiration was the anatomical heart and it’s an exploration of the possibilities of mixing 3D printing with fabric and electronics.

GOAL

The goal of this garment was to explore the technical and expressive possibilities of 3D printing on fabric, and how would it all look when lit up by creating a circuit that simulated the pulse of a heart with red LEDs. Part of the fashion show System Recovery 2.0, the piece was ideated and fabricated in < 2 weeks before the show, in parallel with Seamless Coco and Lace & Voronoi.

PROCESS

I started by creating an outline of an anatomical heart in Rhinoceros, 3D modeling software used for 2 and 3D modeling. After the outline was done, I used Grasshopper, a Rhonceros plugin for parametric design, to create a 3D parametric design with a function called voronoi.

Once I achieved the desired design, I prepared my file and saved it in .stl format for 3d printing.

I then 3d printed the heart on a piece of tulle on an Ultimaker, making sure the PLA filament attached to the fabric. It took a few iterations before it came out but ultimately it worked.

After 3D printing the heart, I laser cut the top part in neoprene and sewed it together.

Then I added an Arduino Lilypad, a Lipo battery pack and I sew a circuit with a few red LEDs, which I programmed with a fade in and out effect that looked like a beating heart.

OUTCOME

The final outcome was a black top with a front piece in tulle with the 3D printed heart which faded the red LEDs in and out like a beating heart.

The effect was quite interesting and inspired the visual effect for the IO<3 project I created a couple months later.