Slash and Run - I Think I'm Done

I've slashed several tee-shirts over the last few days and I think I've finally gotten this whole 3d printed template idea out of my system. Can't really call it a success in traditional terms, but I found out a lot of things. More importantly, I squashed a nagging idea from years back that wouldn't go away until I actually tried it.

I seem to be writing more about this failed attempt than my more complex (and successful) projects. I will return to writing about the highly technical detailed successes soon, but I just felt like I needed to document a silly project once in while.

I think it's because I know there are other makers out there who do the same thing. We all do it, follow an impulse even though we know it might not be the smartest design choice. It's part of the creative process. So continue to play with useless things, make bad choices and try to fix them. Because somewhere underneath, there's a reason you are working this set of problems - sit back, buckle in and enjoy the ride.

Okay, so the template worked fine. But it definitely wasn't worth all the effort.

What did I learn from all this?:

The 3d printed templates did work, but they are more trouble than they are worth

Any time saved during cutting was destroyed in the printing process. If I saved two minutes per cut tee-shirt, I would have to do a lot of shirts to make up for the hour of printing time.

PLA can be cut with a craft blade, and it will get cut after a few uses. Every template got nicked. especially after I started thinking "Hey, I got the hang of this." Not good for high volume, speedy production work.

The "clamping action" derived from using a top and bottom plate didn't help at all. A single template on top worked just as well. At least I cut the printing time in half,

Using medium pressure and multiple strokes of the blade made the cleanest cuts. Trying to cut the cloth in one pass only worked with the sharpest, newest blades - and then only sometimes. It was more likely to drag the cloth instead of cutting all the way through.

The cloth dragged and stretched even when I had a slot in the bottom plate. I had hoped I could puncture the fabric and slice quickly the rest of the length. It didn't work, slashing with the edge of the blade wasn't any more effective than overly forceful use of the blade tip.

Any line shorter than an inch reads as a hole, not a slash. Tiny, intricate patterns just looked like there were a bunch of random holes.

Any slashes closer than 10mm looked like strings. Using 20-50mm spacing made it look more like what I wanted.

Well that clean precision look didn't last very long did it?

Got reminded that tee-shirt material stretches quickly and the clean cuts I made quickly turned into a blobby mess after a short wearing. All that work for five minutes of precisely cut look - then it turned into a tangled mess.

Got reminded that simple slashed in denim jeans are not very effective decorations. Denim does hold the shape of the cuts, so you need to cut an "opening" instead of a simple slash if you want the pattern to be seen. The slits might open up enough to be seen after  a few days of wearing or a good washing or two. But actually cutting sections out to make larger holes worked much better.







After all this designing and printing and testing I arrived at some conclusions:

Cutting the templates with a laser-cutter or CNC would be much quicker and, using chipboard or metal, would result in a sturdier product. I knew this already, but I only have a 3d printer, so I used it.

Maybe I don't need a template at all. I thought it would save me time and it did, but a minute a shirt isn't that significant.

No-one cares about perfectly spaced and cleanly cut lines for the level of designs these templates create. These are simple shapes, not complex lace patterns. And the cloth distorts so quickly the improvement disappears after a few minutes.

Just use a pair of good scissors or get a rotary cutter. They will work just as well as the templating system did for designs that are  this simple.

So was this a failure? Absolutely! I wasted several hours going down the wrong path. And worse yet, I knew it was the wrong path when I started. So why did I do it? Well, history I guess.

Like I said before, I had tried cutting tee-shirts when I was much younger and I didn't like the results. They were sloppy and ragged. I wanted clean, precise cuts. I kept thinking, "If I could only create template it would be much easier."

That idea stuck with me for years, so when I got a 3d printer I decided to try it. I tried it even though I knew a laser cutter or CBC would be a better solution, and even though desktop laser cutters are cheap these days.

I even knew that the cheap scissors I used back then were not appropriate for cloth. Now I own good scissors and can easily make clean cuts in any cloth.

And these days, there are the new rotary cutters that slice through several layers of cloth so cleanly and easily even I can do it.

But you must understand, I had once had an "IDEA" and that thing had stuck in my head for a decade or more. I must bring it out into the open and battle it on the physical level or it would always be bouncing around in my brain taking up space and time that could be used for something useful.

So I did it.

Now I can rest.








So no, this exercise wasn't a failure at all. It was a necessary step for a certain type of warped designer-mind. I won, I killed the silly notion and I have proof of my victory It was a lot of work, but now I can move on to other ideas.

It wasn't a brick wall, it was just a reflection of something else.

And the project wasn't a total loss. I got some other ideas during the process. One involves open flame torches, metal plates and old jeans. Another involves heat bending flat 3d shapes. If either idea works like I hope, evenly a little, I will share the results.

My final thought - get a frikkin laser cutter if you want to do this kind of stuff - that's what they are made for and why they've become so popular. Slap a tee-shirt on the platter and cut out any shape you want in a matter of seconds. If you want to do a lot of tee-shirt and other clothing modifications, invest in the equipment best suited for it. 

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Good Enough to Start With - Cut and Run

I got something right on the first try, then spent a full day trying and failing to make it better - only to realize it didn't really need to be improved. But like most dead ends, I learned a lot of useful stuff along the way.

Last week I posted about a 3d printed template for cutting, slashing and modifying fabric. The design was a success, both because it was easy to customize and print new designs with only a few minutes work for each pattern, and because it actually helped making clean straight cuts in tee-shirts.

Not satisfied, I continued to think of new ways to use this approach until I reached the limits of the first design. I wanted bigger better, smaller faster, simpler yet more complex designs. Are you beginning to suspect I might have gotten carried away?

Sure, the template worked. But I noticed that any design with the slots closer than about 10mm started to create problems. Common tee-shirt fabric, being all stretchy and flimsy, was particularly problematic. It would stretch, gather and distort when the cutting slots got too close together. This really sucked because slashing old tee-shirts was the original impetus behind the entire concept.

I also noticed that very thin or slippery fabrics like sateen, or very thick fabrics like denim didn't always work very well. If I was careful, I could do both. But I had to take care to hold the template just right and position and lay out the fabric correctly.

A simple, first try success wasn't good enough. I had to make it better. I had a serious case of designer fever.

What I needed were some cleats or ridges and matching grooves to really clamp down on the cloth and hold it in place.

So I started a redesign of the entire template system. I spent half of a day thinking about it and drawing simple sketches. What if I put cleats or ridges on the surfaces, maybe add matching indentations to really clinch the cloth and keep it from moving.

I did several sketches like that. I got a feel for a way to draw the "features" easily. And then started thinking about how to automate the process so that I could type in a few numbers and the pattern would magically draw itself.

The first (successful) version simply extruded shapes up from the ground plane, the cut or joined the shapes to create two slotted plates. But this new cleated, wavy system wouldn't work like that. Now, I had to extrude on two or even three planes and somehow coordinate the origins and geometries across multiple drawing steps.

That was kind of annoying. I had to redo all my old work/ And, because I wasn't sure which, if any. of the new shapes would work, I  needed to find the simplest method of automating multiple styles of cleats and clips and waves.

I couldn't find any one style that worked for all shapes, so I wound up generating several different files with completely different automation strategies.

Getting a flat face to match with another flat face is easy. getting curved and notched faces to mate with other curved faces with varying distances between them, well that isn't nearly as easy. Especially if the surfaces curve in all directions at once.

Automating that process is even harder. Boy did I learn a lot.

Or what if I made the entire surface wavy - yeah, that would really lock them together.

I spent about a full day concepting then drawing and automating these new designs. I was getting closer, but also getting frustrated. Then I went back to look at the results from the first tests and realized something.

I didn't need to do all this.

Seriously, I'm never going to be cutting two hundred strips of cloth that are only 2mm wide. That's just ridiculous. Look at any example of slashed tee-shirt mods. They have a few (10-20) cuts and the strips are at least an inch wide, not a hundred tiny cuts.

This project was supposed to be about slapping down a template on a worn out tee and making 10 or 20 relatively straight cuts in a few seconds.

I had gotten carried away and was trying to create a process that would rival the precision of a laser cutter. Why do that?

So I stopped the design and tried to feel better about the day I had just lost to stupidity. It was probably the easiest part of the day. I did actually learn a lot, and any time you find new ways of doing things it's a win. If not today, then sometime soon.

There are parts that I can still use in this design. I can use some of the new ideas in other projects. I'm working on a metal and paper embosser where these techniques are useful. A lot of these ideas are also applicable for sliding joints for lids and cases. And this exploration helped me get a better grasp on basing multi-plane geometries off a single origin point.

So like most failures, I got a lot of useful information to use. So maybe that day wasn't a complete loss after all. Now I'm off to cut up more old shirts.

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