Introduction to Functional Textile Design and Sustainable Manufacturing

About This Course

Computer Numeric Control (CNC) knitted products have become increasingly prevalent in everyday life over the past few years, manifesting in domains that are both design-oriented (sweaters and shoe uppers) and engineering-oriented (seat covers and vehicle chassis preforms etc.). Using design inputs, the machine's loop-by-loop formation enables users to create shaped geometries with different localised properties in a single manufacturing step. Thus, this broadens the design freedom to create a variety of technical textiles with functional properties that can be used for different industries. Moreover, this additive manufacturing technique presents a sustainable method of creating textiles without depending on conventional cut-and-sew processes.

This course introduces participants to digital textile design, with CNC knitting of technical textiles as the main focus. It shares how different properties (i.e. mechanical, shape-change, electrical etc.) can be imparted to the knit and the various basic Computer Numeric Control (CNC) knitting principles of how to achieve them. It will also include sharing sessions from industry specialists to give insights of how they are incorporating sustainability in their business operations.

The latter half is a design workshop to let users have a hands-on experience of how to design a functional knitted textile with variable localised properties. It allows participants to explore using the Kniterate system to design and manufacture these textiles.