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CNC Machine Owner here, I'll add my very limited take. I do mostly one-off or small run projects at my shop, mostly in furniture. Sometimes I make jigs or other

CNC Machine Owner here, I'll add my very limited take. I do mostly one-off or small run projects at my shop, mostly in furniture. Sometimes I make jigs or other tools to help myself work. I'll say this 1000 time: the tools are seldom the problem, it is usually the CAD/CAM. Even if this tool could abstract away some of the complexity, it is still very difficult to model textiles or other wrapped components on a solid. My friends in the Textile business constantly talk about the difficulties in doing that. While this might have meant you didn't need seams, even creating the model of what you wanted is more of a professional endeavor than an average hobby. 3D machining of solid parts, by contrast is much easier. Some of these CNC for the masses projects like glowforge and Wazer look easy, but that's because they're really just 2D cutters. The level of complexity that occurs when you go to 3D is big. The additional complexity of dealing with materials that need to stretch is even greater. It is just beyond the average hobby audience.

crispyambulance 9y ago
As the son of a master tailor, I second what you said. The literal Italian translation of tailoring school is "cutting school." It's where students learn how to construct the patterns, in paper, which are then used to cut the fabric. In addition to the difficulties of just dealing with fabric, there is also tradition of materials, taste, and folk knowledge involved which simply can't be "dialed" into a machine process. There is some room, however, for "made-to-measure" clothing where you get measured and a modern supply-chain can get you set-up, in a semi-automated way with good-fitting clothes. Brioni does this. The tailors are still humans, of course, but you get measured and the clothes are made elsewhere.
- MandieD 9y ago
  The modern German word for tailor is Schneider (feminine: Schneiderin) - "cutter".
tesseract 9y ago
Even in the clothing and textile industry this seems to be true. While different in process from what this startup was working on, advanced CNC knitting machines that can produce an entire garment (think seamless underwear, Nike Flyknit shoes, seamless athletic shirts) have been around and used in mass production for a number of years now. But the notion of customized, individually-fitted garments produced using this type of technology still seems to be quite a ways off even though it's received a lot of hype. Obviously there are logistics challenges, but at least to me as an outsider it seems to be that a big part of the issue is that pattern-making (i.e. the engineering side of clothing design) remains a skilled activity that has not been amenable to full automation.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
This is exactly where Ponoko (https://www.ponoko.com/ https://www.ponoko.com/) went wrong. They're a 3d printing and cutting as a service company. They're still around, but in a much reduced size. The end product is fine, but the problem is that it's just so damn hard to build anything to be cut on the computer, since you have to use an svg editor (so either Inkscape or Illustrator), and use different colours and thicknesses for different cuts. What they really needed to focus on at the start was building an easy to use application (whether web or desktop) that could be used to easily make and mock up designs for cutting and/or 3d printing.
- abakker 9y ago
  An easy cutting applications: Vectric Vcarve Pro. The trouble is that their toolpathing is really only OK for woodworking. They don't have any of the nicer adaptive clearing or constant tool load things. However, in 2.5D, they handle a lot of things very nicely, and very intuitively. I still use it for 2d outline cuts in wood, drag knife work, and 2D vector laser engraving. edit to add: Don't use SVGs or Illustrator for anything except art. They're really a horrible input for any kind of CNC, better to just use CAD ASAP. Fusion360 is a great free option (for now), and Vectric Vcarve Pro is really nice if you want something really easy in 2.5D.
bsder 9y ago
> Even if this tool could abstract away some of the complexity, it is still very difficult to model textiles or other wrapped components on a solid. It's also remarkably difficult to simulate fabric draping. Look at how much trouble Pixar had modeling hair in "The Incredibles"--now make all of those hairs have cross linking hairs and simulate it--yikes!--that's fabric. I'm surprised nobody has taken one of these big GPU clusters and tried something new.
- theoh 9y ago
  Hmmm: actually cloth simulation is constrained relative to hair simulation. (It's an orderly grid -- a Chebyshev net? -- rather than spaghetti) With a simple Verlet integrator you can animate a "fishing net" of points with no difficulty -- because of the direct links between them. Someone else will have to fill in the details of recent research. I remember a paper called "Large Steps in Cloth Simulation" which aimed to remove the need for fine detail in simulations.
  - abakker 9y ago
    Fishing nets don't stretch, so I assume the fact that clothing does adds a lot of complexity, especially since seams won't stretch the same way? Also, different sizes have the same number of seams, but won't have the same overall drape/stretch.
javiramos 9y ago
Agreed! This is probably why Protolabs (NYSE: PRLB) is so profitable. They have incredible CAD/CAM automation technology along with proprietary part fixturing technology. This enables them to have unique efficiencies compared to a traditional shop. Most of the complexity is in the CAD/CAM.

crispyambulance 9y ago

As the son of a master tailor, I second what you said. The literal Italian translation of tailoring school is "cutting school." It's where students learn how to construct the patterns, in paper, which are then used to cut the fabric. In addition to the difficulties of just dealing with fabric, there is also tradition of materials, taste, and folk knowledge involved which simply can't be "dialed" into a machine process. There is some room, however, for "made-to-measure" clothing where you get measured and a modern supply-chain can get you set-up, in a semi-automated way with good-fitting clothes. Brioni does this. The tailors are still humans, of course, but you get measured and the clothes are made elsewhere.

MandieD 9y ago
The modern German word for tailor is Schneider (feminine: Schneiderin) - "cutter".

tesseract 9y ago

Even in the clothing and textile industry this seems to be true. While different in process from what this startup was working on, advanced CNC knitting machines that can produce an entire garment (think seamless underwear, Nike Flyknit shoes, seamless athletic shirts) have been around and used in mass production for a number of years now. But the notion of customized, individually-fitted garments produced using this type of technology still seems to be quite a ways off even though it's received a lot of hype. Obviously there are logistics challenges, but at least to me as an outsider it seems to be that a big part of the issue is that pattern-making (i.e. the engineering side of clothing design) remains a skilled activity that has not been amenable to full automation.

toomanybeersies 9y ago

This is exactly where Ponoko (https://www.ponoko.com/ https://www.ponoko.com/) went wrong. They're a 3d printing and cutting as a service company. They're still around, but in a much reduced size. The end product is fine, but the problem is that it's just so damn hard to build anything to be cut on the computer, since you have to use an svg editor (so either Inkscape or Illustrator), and use different colours and thicknesses for different cuts. What they really needed to focus on at the start was building an easy to use application (whether web or desktop) that could be used to easily make and mock up designs for cutting and/or 3d printing.

abakker 9y ago
An easy cutting applications: Vectric Vcarve Pro. The trouble is that their toolpathing is really only OK for woodworking. They don't have any of the nicer adaptive clearing or constant tool load things. However, in 2.5D, they handle a lot of things very nicely, and very intuitively. I still use it for 2d outline cuts in wood, drag knife work, and 2D vector laser engraving. edit to add: Don't use SVGs or Illustrator for anything except art. They're really a horrible input for any kind of CNC, better to just use CAD ASAP. Fusion360 is a great free option (for now), and Vectric Vcarve Pro is really nice if you want something really easy in 2.5D.

bsder 9y ago

> Even if this tool could abstract away some of the complexity, it is still very difficult to model textiles or other wrapped components on a solid. It's also remarkably difficult to simulate fabric draping. Look at how much trouble Pixar had modeling hair in "The Incredibles"--now make all of those hairs have cross linking hairs and simulate it--yikes!--that's fabric. I'm surprised nobody has taken one of these big GPU clusters and tried something new.

theoh 9y ago
Hmmm: actually cloth simulation is constrained relative to hair simulation. (It's an orderly grid -- a Chebyshev net? -- rather than spaghetti) With a simple Verlet integrator you can animate a "fishing net" of points with no difficulty -- because of the direct links between them. Someone else will have to fill in the details of recent research. I remember a paper called "Large Steps in Cloth Simulation" which aimed to remove the need for fine detail in simulations.
- abakker 9y ago
  Fishing nets don't stretch, so I assume the fact that clothing does adds a lot of complexity, especially since seams won't stretch the same way? Also, different sizes have the same number of seams, but won't have the same overall drape/stretch.

javiramos 9y ago

Agreed! This is probably why Protolabs (NYSE: PRLB) is so profitable. They have incredible CAD/CAM automation technology along with proprietary part fixturing technology. This enables them to have unique efficiencies compared to a traditional shop. Most of the complexity is in the CAD/CAM.