Astro Hacker News - 3D-Knitting: The Ultimate Guide

jeffreysmith |next [-]

I interviewed these guys for an article on the use of seaweed in yarn and fabric. And I bought the 3D knit seaweed sweater. Great team, with a lot of heart and good intentions.

I'm also a hand knitter, and I don't really see any conflict between what they're doing and hand knitting. The grist of the yarn that you use as a hand knitter is generally much thicker than these machines commonly use. Commercial 3D knitting machines can do all of the stretchy, thin, and light stuff that the modern wardrobe is built around.

As folks note, this technology was really pioneered by Shimaseki's work in Japan just decades ago. What OC and the similar Brooklyn-based Tailored Industry are really innovating on is the business model and connection to production process. Folks like this are really serious about not producing all of the waste that comes with most fashion production processes, and it shows up at several levels of the stack.

For the HN crowd, TI's platform gives you more of a sense of why this sort of tech is really like the cloud for knitwear: https://tailoredindustry.com/platform

Really a fascinating part of the global fashion production world, and one we would all benefit from seeing grow.

haritha-j |next |previous [-]

They pitch this as the panacea to fast fashion, but surely the solution to fast fashion is just to not buy and throw away so many clothes? I don't believe we buy cheap clothes because we can't find good quality clothes that last, but because we like owning lots of clothes and keeping up with trends. When my last laptop broke I was kind of happy. I thought "ooh now I can upgrade to a shiny new laptop guilt-free". I think that's the real problem.

paulluuk |root |parent |next [-]

I bought a 200 dollar jacket and it had holes in it within months, just from regular use. I have an old 3 dollar shirt I bought years ago and it's only now beginning to show wear.

One problem this shows, is that as a consumer I have no idea what the hell is quality clothing. Clearly, expensive does not always mean high quality. And I'm not buying "brand" clothing either.

kace91 |root |parent [-]

Another problem is the dive to the bottom that the industry has suffered.

Your experience is very common, I have a fake nike sweatshirt I bought more than a decade ago from a random street seller (emergency on a trip) which still outlasts current brand clothes.

Consumers' ignorance is not the problem, it used to be generally true that the more expensive item was better. Every brand has seemingly decided to burn their furniture to heat the house though, and what we experience is not as much consumer ignorance as it is a lack of names deserving trust.

_flux |root |parent |next |previous [-]

As I understand it, a big part of produced clothing just goes straight to waste to begin with. If everything was created on-demand, it would minimize that kind of waste.

Cthulhu_ |root |parent [-]

That would be great, a lot of clothes are made at sizes that don't sell very well and which get discounted, then discarded if they don't sell.

However, made on demand will likely cost more, plus you can't fit items first. Unless they make items for fitting which you can then order to have manufactured.

But yeah the main thing is that on-demand can never compete with mass production even if a big part of the mass produced stuff is discarded.

Perseids |root |parent |next [-]

> on-demand can never compete with mass production even if a big part of the mass produced stuff is discarded.

This is definitely not universally true. E.g. photos are very cheaply printed on demand. Even on-demand books are printed at reasonable prices. Sure, mass production is cheaper (both for books and pictures), but the value difference of the individual product is high enough to bridge the price gap.

For cloth this area has found little exploration. TFA covers production at niche scale. If you would mass produce the looms to reduce the capital expense and heavily lean into customer value, e.g. individual fittings via 3d scans, as my sister comment proposes, or even just letting me customize my sweater with motive, color choice, garment etc., this could radically change the cost to value ratio. The company that has published TFA sells extremely bland apparel in a shop that looks just like any mass produced clothing shop and leaves all of the customer value of custom production on the table.

Last but not least: This "3d knitting" seems to need only a fraction of the labor of traditional sewed clothes. If textile production didn't default to underpaid labor under precarious working conditions in low income countries, it would probably already be cheaper.

reverius42 |root |parent |previous [-]

From 3d printed clothing, the obvious next step should be to have your phone take a 3d scan of you, and send it to the clothing designer to print it to your actual body size and shape. We could have truly unique sizing (none of this S/M/L/XL stuff)!

poszlem |root |parent |next |previous [-]

If "the solution" depends on people changing their behaviour on their own (ideally by lowering their expectations/do the harder thing/etc), it is almost never "the solution". It is usually just wishful thinking.

Zababa |root |parent |next |previous [-]

> surely the solution to fast fashion is just to not buy and throw away so many clothes?

"just don't do X" has basically never worked, it is not a serious solution to any problem.

starvar2 |root |parent |previous [-]

Honestly, even "good" brands seem to make a lot of low quality items these days. I honestly find it hard to find good, lasting, clothes.

WillAdams |next |previous [-]

Interestingly, this potentially has applications beyond clothing.

A while back, Lee Valley did a 3D knitted chisel roll using Kevlar and other materials, in support of the Canadian company which invented the 3D knitting process used (unfortunately, at the time, I didn't have the money or need for --- I've since updated my woodworking toolkit and have a nice set of chisels which it would have been perfect for, except it was discontinued and is no longer available...)

idiot900 |next |previous [-]

This is an ad for a company that drop ships their product from another company that has made its business on offering production and fulfillment of canned (but customizable) 3D knit styles.

tecleandor |root |parent [-]

Are they dropshipping preexisting designs, or are they making custom orders to a knitting company?

Edit: totally sincere question, I don't know their process

zokier |next |previous [-]

So this is an ad for company that purchased an off-the-shelf industrial knitting machine and is trying to sell it as some new novel innovation with cringe "3d knitting" branding. If you go to the the manufacturer site you can find same talking points and plenty of logos: https://www.shimaseiki.com/wholegarment/

doctorhandshake |root |parent |next [-]

I think this is an uncharitable view of the information on offer. The linked page similarly brands the technique with a trademarked WHOLEGARMENT label, claiming it’s a world first, so it doesn’t seem a stretch to see how these folks got to claiming it’s novel and making a bit of a todo about how it’s different. It also seems to have some business model implications that on first approximation look less than favorable, so I think that helps to justify the need for a position paper like this.

yorwba |root |parent [-]

According to the Shima Seiki history page: https://www.shimaseiki.com/company/dna/history/ it was a world first in 1995. That doesn't make it novel anymore in 2026.

I would nonetheless find it interesting to read an "ultimate guide" explaining how the knitting machines work, but this ain't it.

tecleandor |root |parent [-]

But the site doesn't say anything about being new, and in fact says it was invented in 1995:

  When Was 3D-Knitting Invented?

  The concept of 3D-knitting was first envisioned and then developed by the
  Japanese company SHIMA SEIKI. They launched their first WHOLEGARMENT knitting
  machine at the ITMA trade fair in 1995.

meigwilym |root |parent |previous [-]

Then perhaps the poster is drawing attention to the clever marketing, rather than the machine itself?

willis936 |next |previous [-]

Right now I'm doing the opposite: 3D printing a loom for hand-knit garments.

https://www.printables.com/model/1483991-fall-is-looming-the...

bregma |root |parent [-]

Looms weave. You need a knitting machine to knit.

elil17 |next |previous [-]

So in theory 3D-Knitting can produce a made-to-measure garment on demand, and has been able to for years.

And yet, no one actually offers to sell you a made-to-measure knitted garment. Why?

A few theories: - Knits are stretchy so there's limited demand for M2M - DFM/software issues - no one actually knows to generate a pattern from a set of sizes without human intervention - Issues with OEE - it's inefficient to wait for orders to produce the garments because the capital cost of the machines is so high. - Logistics - you don't want to deal with shipping everyone the right order.

torlok |root |parent [-]

Which clanker generated this slop for you? I pasted the first 2 lines of this post into the free Gemini version and got 3 out of 4 of these theories.

ExxKA |next |previous [-]

Why are you posting this to HackerNews?

This isnt a hype board, for consumer products. Its supposed to be a tech first community.

cm-t |root |parent [-]

not sure to understand your point, knitting is not a tech field to you, or the content itself of the article is not tech oriented enough ?

teiferer |previous [-]

I understand the appeal of this tech to techies. It's so cool to automate knitting!

Though it totally misses the point of actually knitting something, with your own hands. The time it takes, the details you need to think about, the skills you work on perfecting, the quiet evening on the sofa or in a cafe with friends, chatting and knitting away, all that goes into a piece of clothing that you've knitted. Letting a machine do that is completely missing out.

I feel similarly about AI generated music. Taking the musician out of the loop misses the point of the whole thing.

tecleandor |root |parent |next [-]

But this talks about the mass production of garments. Nobody at the Zara factory is having a quiet evening knitting on the sofa.

The idea of this is: knitting on demand, customizable, less waste.

You can still knit your things at home if you want to do your own stuff, or relax a bit...

Poacher5 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

This is knitting as a method of mass-production. It's not cannibalizing hobby knitters making hats and gloves for their loved ones at Christmas. The comparison to AI music doesn't work because that is trying to occupy the same space as musical artists.

2muchcoffeeman |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Knitting by hand is for fun, with a by product of getting clothes. No one does it to make all their clothes, it’s highly impractical in this day and age.

mkreis |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Depends whether you see it as a production method or an art/recreational activity. There can be both, and don't worry, hand-made products will always have a special value. Even if everybody can order custom made knitted sweater from a machine.

|root |parent |next |previous [-]

elil17 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Most garments have been knitted on knitting machines since the 1850s

127 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

No, it doesn't miss the point. Different people have different interests. Knitting just hits more overlapping Venn diagrams than just one.

soco |root |parent |previous [-]

The goal is the path... a concept often foreign to western, to contemporary, to techies.