
Automatic Machine Knitting of 3D Meshes - xbryanx
https://textiles-lab.github.io/publications/2018-autoknit/
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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/](https://www.knittedknockers.org/)

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abraae
Things your Grandma said while knitting ... never:

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

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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!

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Y_Y
Nice! My grandma studied mathematics under Eamonn De Valera, the American who
liberated Ireland.

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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.

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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.

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kaitai
Similar methods are already in use in clothing design. Programs and patterns
have the "extra space" built in; the jargon for it in knitwear is "ease" and
it varies not only according to desired fit but also type of yarn/fiber. A
garment with negative ease, for instance, needs to expand to fit onto your
body, while a garment with positive ease is larger than the body measurements,
and of course you could vary the ease within the garment.

There is some interesting engineering that needs to happen near large joints
-- as you say, a "perfectly form-fitting sweater" might have some difficulties
at the armpits for instance as we have such a range of motion there. But these
are well-studied problems!

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

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

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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.

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

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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?

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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...](https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/how-to-knit-carbon-fibers/)

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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](https://youtu.be/R3Ax7U5dvbc)

Note that the video is silent.

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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.

~~~
candiodari
As we all know, the internet is about the free and open sharing of other
people's ideas !

~~~
dag11
That's a nice sentiment but that isn't how laws work.

~~~
colordrops
Laws are a sentiment but that isn't how reality works.

~~~
candiodari
Indeed. Western legal principle: everything is legal, until you get convicted.

(Technically it's even more specific than that. You don't get to complain or
get enforcement just because something is illegal. 3 conditions need to be
satisfied. First, it needs to violate the law, as it the law applies to both
the complainant and the defendant. Second there needs to be damage to the
complainant. Thirdly there needs to be a causal connection between the damage
and the law violation. And of course, there's still the implicit condition:
there must be a complaint in the first place)

I wish people would keep this in mind when talking about law.

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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?

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

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

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

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billconan
how much does a knitting machine cost?

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

~~~
dagw
You can also get hobby machines as well, starting from a a couple of thousand
dollars.

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paulhart
This is true, but you'll tend to get used machines (even at that price). I own
a Passap 6000 as well as a single-bed machine; they're fun toys to have,
definitely on the unusual side of the nerdy scale.

Various links to fun projects:

* [https://www.hackerspace-bamberg.de/Passap_pfaff_e6000](https://www.hackerspace-bamberg.de/Passap_pfaff_e6000) * [https://www.hackerspace-bamberg.de/Knitty](https://www.hackerspace-bamberg.de/Knitty)

* [http://www.kniterate.com](http://www.kniterate.com) (this is very cool, but $8000)

