My Cup Runneth Over - 3d Printed Bra v1

Support your local makers - I'm doing my part with this 3d printed bra. Yes, that's right... a custom bikini top bra cup designed in Fusion 360 and printed on a hobby level 3d printer.

Okay, so the project started as a hat. Think "fascinator" base or mesh ball-caps. I wanted to see how different types of French curves joined together when bent. I knew different curves could result in any shape from a cone to a perfect sphere, or onion domes to flattened rounded-corner cylinders. But I had never really designed something with a variable curving shape. Hats looked like a good item to test with. Little did I know.

So I started experimenting with curves and shapes and bending --- and voila, I had my first piece of 3d printed lingerie instead. It not only  turned out better than I expected, I decided a 3d printed bikini top is way more useful and fun than a hat anyways - pretty happy with this failure discovery.

Bright pink bikini bra cup printed on a 3d printer and designed in Fusion 360. It's a bit of over designing, but it sure was fun.

I've been experimenting with heat-shaping 3d printed panels recently. Sure, I can print the model pre-shaped, an all in one standalone print. I could have easily printed this object pre-bent and ready to wear. But as I discovered when printing my mini-terrarium greenhouse, it's sometimes a lot quicker to print flat objects and assemble them.

My first experiment with heat-forming 3d-prints was a simple bowl made from a flat 3d-printed sheet, which turned out okay. Good enough that I wanted to try something more complex.

The bowl shaping experiment relied on the patterns within the perforations to allow deformation when heated. The corners in the pattern are arranged so that the surface can bend in three dimensions without significantly changing the structure. That technique worked fine, so I wanted to add a second variable to better control the shape.

I know a little about traditional pattern making for clothes. I also have some experience shaping and heat-forming foam panels into costumes and props for cosplay. So I figured heat shaping PLA wouldn't be that much different.

I also wanted to use this series of tests to better understand just how curves affect the final shape. I have Fusion 360 and Meshmixer and several other programs that could take the final shape and create a cutting pattern for me.

(I had to print a couple of quick failed experiments before I remembered that I needed to use those traditional pattern making skills though. Not always the smartest cookie on the shelf.)

But the software makes most of the decisions when I use those techniques, and I really wanted to understand how to do it manually. I think when I understand pattern making better I can probably force or at least suggest settings for the programs to give me better patterns.

This is the first experiment that gave me the smoothly varying curves I was after. It was a very simple pattern, but it was also the first time I used splines (aka French curves) instead of simple arcs. The result is a lot closer to a single, flowing shape and less like the segmented domes I got when I used simple arcs and lines.

That's when I decided to declare, "This is now officially a bra." Well, half a bra... okay just one cup. But still, it's a much more body-friendly form than anything I had created before.

Also notice that the decorative-infill pattern is simple. It is NOT designed to flex and deform. That means this sheet of plastic reacts to bending in a manner very similar to that of paper or non-stretchy cloth. It's really just the way the two curves join that makes the final shape so much smoother.

If I combined the deformable-mesh technique from the bowl experiment with the spline-curve edges from this experiment, the plastic sheet should begin to behave more like cosplay-foam or stretchy cloth. Then... print it in flexible filament to actually make it comfortable to wear. That's the next phase of experiments.

And yes, there should be more experiments with 3d-printed fabric and clothing coming soon. But understanding the traditional methods of pattern making is still an essential skill. For instance, my 3d-printed chainmail is pretty flexible. But to get it to fit properly at any large scale, like a vest or corset, I will still need to create differently shaped pieces of the mail just like you would with old-fashioned cloth.

The pattern in Fusion 360. You can see the different types of curves on every edge. Sure, it's 3d, but the principles are the same as used in traditional clothing patterns.

So no matter which direction I go, I must get better at pattern making. Right now, I have my hands full just with this, but I can already tell it's going to be a fun journey.

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