3D Print Your Shirt with James Novak

3D Printing & Imaging Craft & Design

Few people would think to combine T-shirts and 3D prints, and fewer still would try to turn it into a business. But James Novak isn’t your typical consumer.

Starting out

James Novak has been at this for a while, starting with studying 3D printing in 2009. His first claim to fame was working on the first single-part 3D-printed bicycle frame in 2014. His work eventually led to one of those dream projects we all hope for, when a big organization hands you a lofty but open-ended mission.

In this case, he was asked to explore combining 3D printing and wool for Woolmark. He created loads of prototypes during his time, and eventually moved on. But the idea of mixing textiles and printing never left his mind. And recent considerations about customizability, consumer fashion, and access to new machines all built up to his latest venture. It combines the universal form of expression, the T-shirt, with custom text: 3D Print My Shirt.

Mixing apparel and 3D printing

We’ve covered 3D printing onto fabric before. But incorporating prints bigger than a machine’s bed usually involves printing on multiple fabric swatches and sewing them together. The goal for 3D Print My Shirt was to find a repeatable method of adding decoration across a wide shirt, or odd shape like a trucker hat, without hand sewing.

James experimented with a wide range of techniques – including various mixes of materials and adhesives – before settling on a heat-based process that’s durable and gave the results he was looking for.

I use heat, no glue, but the specific process is a little bit of a trade secret right now due to how long it has taken to perfect! I burnt many shirts along the way, that’s for sure, may they rest in peace.

“These are some of the tests and experiments we were doing in 2018 to combine 3D printing and wool. Some plastics are TPU, others are PLA and recycled plastics.”

Launching on Kickstarter

He notes that while other makers have made videos covering how to print on fabric, he couldn’t find anyone optimizing for repeatability. So James launched a limited-edition Kickstarter to explore scaling up the process. Setting a small goal is a great way of testing a new product or system before making major investments.

“Some more recent tests of different letters and graphics, mostly experimenting with techniques to bond to fabric. The turtle in particular has been very popular on social media, I’m sure it will be one of the first 3D graphics we’ll release with our website launch.”

Mass customization has long been one of 3D printing’s biggest promises. Text is a flexible form of expression, but of course it came with its own challenges. As James puts it:

Taking any font and making it 3D comes with new choices, both aesthetic and related to design for manufacture (in this case, 3D printing). I needed to design a font that had a reasonable surface area at the base for bonding to fabric, but then accentuated the colour-change of the filament I was using.

Early interest and feedback

The early replies to his campaign has been positive. In response to questions about durability and sustainability, he tested the prints through 20 wash cycles. And he showed how, if you tried to tear off the decoration, the shirt came apart before it lifted from the print.

So far my test shirts have been through dozens of washes, no issues. You basically have to rip the cotton fibres and ruin the shirt to remove them.

He also is offering to accept used shirts, and give customers a discount on their next order, with the goal of recycling old filament into new products.

Photo by James Novak

If you want to show off small 3D-printed designs, you can print directly on a shirt. Or if you want to incorporate electronics with fabric and 3D prints, take a look at this light-up tote bag from Make: Volume 87.

Remember, crowdfunding is a bit of a gamble, some projects may not deliver.

Photos by James Novak

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Sam Freeman builds and writes about fun things, and has a healthy obsession with chai.

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