7 ms·

3D-Knitting: The Ultimate Guide

248 points by ChadNauseam 7mo ago

teiferer 7mo ago
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.
- soco 7mo ago
  The goal is the path... a concept often foreign to western, to contemporary, to techies.
  - dexihand 7mo ago
    First person to really automate sewing is going to make like a gilded-age robber-Barron
- tecleandor 7mo ago
  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...
- 127 7mo ago
  No, it doesn't miss the point. Different people have different interests. Knitting just hits more overlapping Venn diagrams than just one.
- mkreis 7mo ago
  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.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- elil17 7mo ago
  Most garments have been knitted on knitting machines since the 1850s
- Poacher5 7mo ago
  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 7mo ago
  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.
  - ninalanyon 7mo ago
    What makes it "impractical in this day and age". My wife and her mother knitted sweaters, cardigans, scarves, hats. My wife also sewed skirts, blouses, and full length winter coats. I don't have any hand knitted skirts but I do have several that were commercially machine knitted. I'm quite sure that had my wife wanted to she could have knitted and sewn many complete suits of clothes.
elil17 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
  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.
  - elil17 7mo ago
    I just thought with my brain, sorry you didn't like what I wrote.
zokier 7mo ago
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/ https://www.shimaseiki.com/wholegarment/
- doctorhandshake 7mo ago
  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 7mo ago
    According to the Shima Seiki history page: https://www.shimaseiki.com/company/dna/history/ 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 7mo ago
      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.
    - dogtimeimmortal 7mo ago
      These are not cheap machines! Looking around online, i found a lot of 4 Shima Seiki machines listed for $40k! If someone is interested getting into knitting, I would recommend starting with some cheap hand-crank machines from a brand like Sentro. You will learn a lot more, and there is a lot you can do with knit tubes. If absolutely don't want a tube, you can get a so-called panel machine. I think you can find one on Amazon or Etsy - i forget the listing i saw, but it was like $500(much less than a Shima Seiki). Here are a couple useful sites to get started: https://machineknitting.fandom.com/wiki/Machine_Knitting_Wiki https://machineknitting.fandom.com/wiki/Machine_Knitting_Wik... https://www.knittingparadise.com/forums/machine-knitting.20/ https://www.knittingparadise.com/forums/machine-knitting.20/
haritha-j 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
  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.
  - torben-friis 7mo ago
    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.
  - IAmBroom 7mo ago
    I've been trying to buy winter coats at end of season (coincidentally; not chasing sales), and one thing is consistent: fabric content is only hinted at. "Full wool" but "slightly stretchy" - possible with a broadcloth woven wool, but more likely "full"!=100%. "Cashmere" at prices that can (at best) be 10% cashmere, but might be 2% just to avoid outright fraud. I bought a really good-looking dark blue fedora; I received a really good-looking black fedora a size-and-a-1/2 too big. I had to fight them at the credit card level, because they offered me half off at best for a hat I can't wear. What is inconsistent: only some of them are fraudulent fronts. I'd guess about 25-50% right now, based on my recent shopping experiences. But not all: I ordered some expensive gloves; their advertised fit was wrong; we settled on 50% off (I /can/ wear them, but it's not ideal, and their return policy clearly required me to ship back). That firm had shite measurement guides, but honest merchant fronting. I've ordered super-cool button-front shirts that ended up being tissue-like fabric. Grrr... Speaking of fabric... Amazon folded Fabric.com into their Borg cube, and you CANNOT buy fabric by weight online - for some goddamn reason. I want to buy 100% white cotton for a play costume, and need it thicker - between sheeting and terrycloth; closer to the latter; Nothing else really matters to me about it. But can I determine the cloth thickness/weight? Nope. So: 50% swindlers; 75% idiots; buy clothes in person or else expect to throw a certain amount away.
ExxKA 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
  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 ?
  - SV_BubbleTime 7mo ago
    I think maybe OP is knotted up about it pretty obviously being an ad. And rightfully so. Seriously 3D knitting… then going on about 2D patterns?
    - ChadNauseam 7mo ago
      I mean it's a link to a page with their marketing copy. But I posted it because I found it interesting. I'm not affiliated with the company.
willis936 7mo ago
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-weaving-loom https://www.printables.com/model/1483991-fall-is-looming-the...
- bregma 7mo ago
  Looms weave. You need a knitting machine to knit.
  - serf 7mo ago
    that's true, but there are also like 200 sock knitting machine designs for FDM printing out there , maybe they're just slowly walking through all of the printable textile methods . loom is probably more satisfying to get working right, but the knitting machines are a joy to just stare at while they're working. Hypnotic.
    - bregma 7mo ago
      Warping a loom by hand is a nightmare of repetitive tweaking, drawing each warp end through a heddle and adjusting the tension, one by one and back again. It's like restringing and tuning a guitar with hundreds of strings. Even hand knitting is slightly better -- cast 250 stitches on to a circular needle then start the next row, only to find 10 rows later you've twisted it and are now knitting a Moebius sweater. Rip it out and repeat (sometimes referred to as "frogging" or "tinking"). Yeah, knitting machines are satisfying in many ways.
WillAdams 7mo ago
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...)
jeffreysmith 7mo ago
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 https://tailoredindustry.com/platform Really a fascinating part of the global fashion production world, and one we would all benefit from seeing grow.
- vessenes 7mo ago
  I have a small sweater line I’m looking at doing in china right now but I have a long lasting fascination with the shima seki machines. If you were doing a short fashion run would TI be appropriate? How does one get their preferred yarn over to someone like TI?
  - jeffreysmith 7mo ago
    They definitely are a powerful option for smaller scale runs. Very much optimized to have the unit economics and turnaround time work for smaller brands. I don't really know the answer around supplying your own yarn. I'd assume that's the abnormal case, but just a guess.
  - chrisBob 7mo ago
    TI says that they offer custom yarn at their "Flagship" level, with a $20k upfront cost. Not sure how that compares to setting up production overseas. Look at their plan features chart: https://tailoredindustry.com/pricing/boutique https://tailoredindustry.com/pricing/boutique
idiot900 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
  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
  - chrisBob 7mo ago
    Tailored Industries (the factory) says they have over 300 products that are available immediately as white-labeled items at your custom online boutique. I don't know if any of these designs were customized or not, but it is a surprisingly low startup cost to put together a shopify store and have Tailored Industries make your clothes on demand. You need some photos, and a cool looking brand, and they do all of the hard work. I wonder if I should open up my own shop...
- SV_BubbleTime 7mo ago
  Very very much an ad, including the current top level comment from the looks of things. It’s only missing em dashes. At least someone cleaned those out.
  - ChadNauseam 7mo ago
    I submitted the post and I'm not affiliated with the brand in any way. I'm just interested in 3D-knitting tech.
Krei-se 7mo ago
My grandfather wrote a scifi utopia featuring printed-on-human garments similar to this ("Fahrt nach Futuras"). So you would wake up, wash then stand on some platform and have your daily outfit knitted on you. Not sure how he worked around the risk of strangling though lol. Still funny. Thanks making it reality!
mhb 7mo ago
They seem to have left out the most interesting part - what does that machine cost?
- serf 7mo ago
  yeah. I was waiting for at least some kind of portal into the actual engineering and craft of the thing due to the name of the article, and was left with an advertisement flavored sour aftertaste.
mastax 7mo ago
Uniqlo offers a few 3D knit items, I’ve been meaning to try them out. Pretty basic styles though.
patall 7mo ago
Would be cool if it could also de-knit to modify clothing or reuse later. I.e if there is a hole: automatically deknit, splice in a replacement and fix it. Or if your belly growth: deknit and make that section slightly wider. And can you use finer yarn as well, like lace? The reason a sweater is knit like it is, is because of the tradeoff between knitting time and material needed. But if labor becomes free, you should be able to knit much bigger yet more delicate stuff. Edit: ah, deknitting is called frogging
teiferer 7mo ago
Funny that they speak so negatively about "fast fashion". If anything I would expect on-demand clothes production contribute to an _increase_ in that phenomenon, rather than the opposite.
- criticas 7mo ago
  Not at these prices :-) $150 - $200 for a sweater is not cheap. I think of fast fashion in terms of "how many times do I have to wear it to get my money's worth?" If the answer is less than the number of times I'd wear it in a year, it's fast fashion. Of course, if you're a thrift shop shopper, most fashion is fast fashion.
criticas 7mo ago
What a thoroughly modern world we live in. My first reaction was to check if this was an April Fool's blog post.
jaustin 7mo ago
Can anyone else comment on the durability claims here - I wear a lot of knitwear but in my experience it is almost never the case that they fail at the seams. Is the cut/sew mechanism of fabrication part of the weakening? (my jumpers tent to either wear through in elbows (patchable!) or ultimately get nicked/cut by something like a branch I failed to avoid).
- amluto 7mo ago
  I’ve seen quite a few pathetic failures of the cool modern ultrasonic-welded seams and also pathetic failures of high end well known athletic brands. But a competently sewn seam really ought to last at least as long as the fabric.
kdazzle 7mo ago
I'm kind of in this space - 3d knitting is pretty interesting, but knitting a sweater like that takes a long time (I forget how long, but I think it's 1-2 hours), so it's not really a solution for working at any sort of scale. Unless you build up inventory or have a ton of machines. But the machines are super expensive compared to regular knitting machines. I also think that wholegarment knits look kind of cheap and that sewing actually adds structural integrity and durability to a garment. But anything knitting or clothes related is really fun and challenging and good for them for making a business out of it.
- janeerie 7mo ago
  "I also think that wholegarment knits look kind of cheap and that sewing actually adds structural integrity and durability to a garment." This is an ongoing discussion in the handknitting community. Knitters generally hate seaming (we're not sewers!) so the most popular patterns tend to be seamless. However, many argue that this leads to shapeless, saggy garments that aren't as wearable.
  - kdazzle 7mo ago
    Fully fashioned hand knit stuff looks great! I just haven’t seen a wholegarment machine knit shirt that looks nice. Maybe because the yarn isn’t as chunky.
olejorgenb 7mo ago
"Most important 3D-knitting offers the promise of customization, or as we call it, the chipotle effect. Size and fit are the number one reasons people return clothes purchased online and in person. In the next few years, maybe even months, we'll be able to solve that problem for good. Since 3D-knitting allows us to knit on demand, we'll soon be able to offer every size imaginable in every style, material, and color." I had hoped they provided this already.

248 points by ChadNauseam 7mo ago

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.

soco 7mo ago
The goal is the path... a concept often foreign to western, to contemporary, to techies.
- dexihand 7mo ago
  First person to really automate sewing is going to make like a gilded-age robber-Barron
tecleandor 7mo ago
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...
127 7mo ago
No, it doesn't miss the point. Different people have different interests. Knitting just hits more overlapping Venn diagrams than just one.
mkreis 7mo ago
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.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
elil17 7mo ago
Most garments have been knitted on knitting machines since the 1850s
Poacher5 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
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.
- ninalanyon 7mo ago
  What makes it "impractical in this day and age". My wife and her mother knitted sweaters, cardigans, scarves, hats. My wife also sewed skirts, blouses, and full length winter coats. I don't have any hand knitted skirts but I do have several that were commercially machine knitted. I'm quite sure that had my wife wanted to she could have knitted and sewn many complete suits of clothes.

elil17 7mo ago

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 7mo ago
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.
- elil17 7mo ago
  I just thought with my brain, sorry you didn't like what I wrote.

zokier 7mo ago

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/ https://www.shimaseiki.com/wholegarment/

doctorhandshake 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
  According to the Shima Seiki history page: https://www.shimaseiki.com/company/dna/history/ 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 7mo ago
    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.
  - dogtimeimmortal 7mo ago
    These are not cheap machines! Looking around online, i found a lot of 4 Shima Seiki machines listed for $40k! If someone is interested getting into knitting, I would recommend starting with some cheap hand-crank machines from a brand like Sentro. You will learn a lot more, and there is a lot you can do with knit tubes. If absolutely don't want a tube, you can get a so-called panel machine. I think you can find one on Amazon or Etsy - i forget the listing i saw, but it was like $500(much less than a Shima Seiki). Here are a couple useful sites to get started: https://machineknitting.fandom.com/wiki/Machine_Knitting_Wiki https://machineknitting.fandom.com/wiki/Machine_Knitting_Wik... https://www.knittingparadise.com/forums/machine-knitting.20/ https://www.knittingparadise.com/forums/machine-knitting.20/

haritha-j 7mo ago

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 7mo ago
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.
- torben-friis 7mo ago
  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.
- IAmBroom 7mo ago
  I've been trying to buy winter coats at end of season (coincidentally; not chasing sales), and one thing is consistent: fabric content is only hinted at. "Full wool" but "slightly stretchy" - possible with a broadcloth woven wool, but more likely "full"!=100%. "Cashmere" at prices that can (at best) be 10% cashmere, but might be 2% just to avoid outright fraud. I bought a really good-looking dark blue fedora; I received a really good-looking black fedora a size-and-a-1/2 too big. I had to fight them at the credit card level, because they offered me half off at best for a hat I can't wear. What is inconsistent: only some of them are fraudulent fronts. I'd guess about 25-50% right now, based on my recent shopping experiences. But not all: I ordered some expensive gloves; their advertised fit was wrong; we settled on 50% off (I /can/ wear them, but it's not ideal, and their return policy clearly required me to ship back). That firm had shite measurement guides, but honest merchant fronting. I've ordered super-cool button-front shirts that ended up being tissue-like fabric. Grrr... Speaking of fabric... Amazon folded Fabric.com into their Borg cube, and you CANNOT buy fabric by weight online - for some goddamn reason. I want to buy 100% white cotton for a play costume, and need it thicker - between sheeting and terrycloth; closer to the latter; Nothing else really matters to me about it. But can I determine the cloth thickness/weight? Nope. So: 50% swindlers; 75% idiots; buy clothes in person or else expect to throw a certain amount away.

ExxKA 7mo ago

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 7mo ago
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 ?
- SV_BubbleTime 7mo ago
  I think maybe OP is knotted up about it pretty obviously being an ad. And rightfully so. Seriously 3D knitting… then going on about 2D patterns?
  - ChadNauseam 7mo ago
    I mean it's a link to a page with their marketing copy. But I posted it because I found it interesting. I'm not affiliated with the company.

willis936 7mo ago

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

bregma 7mo ago
Looms weave. You need a knitting machine to knit.
- serf 7mo ago
  that's true, but there are also like 200 sock knitting machine designs for FDM printing out there , maybe they're just slowly walking through all of the printable textile methods . loom is probably more satisfying to get working right, but the knitting machines are a joy to just stare at while they're working. Hypnotic.
  - bregma 7mo ago
    Warping a loom by hand is a nightmare of repetitive tweaking, drawing each warp end through a heddle and adjusting the tension, one by one and back again. It's like restringing and tuning a guitar with hundreds of strings. Even hand knitting is slightly better -- cast 250 stitches on to a circular needle then start the next row, only to find 10 rows later you've twisted it and are now knitting a Moebius sweater. Rip it out and repeat (sometimes referred to as "frogging" or "tinking"). Yeah, knitting machines are satisfying in many ways.

WillAdams 7mo ago

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...)

jeffreysmith 7mo ago

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 https://tailoredindustry.com/platform Really a fascinating part of the global fashion production world, and one we would all benefit from seeing grow.

vessenes 7mo ago
I have a small sweater line I’m looking at doing in china right now but I have a long lasting fascination with the shima seki machines. If you were doing a short fashion run would TI be appropriate? How does one get their preferred yarn over to someone like TI?
- jeffreysmith 7mo ago
  They definitely are a powerful option for smaller scale runs. Very much optimized to have the unit economics and turnaround time work for smaller brands. I don't really know the answer around supplying your own yarn. I'd assume that's the abnormal case, but just a guess.
- chrisBob 7mo ago
  TI says that they offer custom yarn at their "Flagship" level, with a $20k upfront cost. Not sure how that compares to setting up production overseas. Look at their plan features chart: https://tailoredindustry.com/pricing/boutique https://tailoredindustry.com/pricing/boutique

idiot900 7mo ago

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 7mo ago
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
- chrisBob 7mo ago
  Tailored Industries (the factory) says they have over 300 products that are available immediately as white-labeled items at your custom online boutique. I don't know if any of these designs were customized or not, but it is a surprisingly low startup cost to put together a shopify store and have Tailored Industries make your clothes on demand. You need some photos, and a cool looking brand, and they do all of the hard work. I wonder if I should open up my own shop...
SV_BubbleTime 7mo ago
Very very much an ad, including the current top level comment from the looks of things. It’s only missing em dashes. At least someone cleaned those out.
- ChadNauseam 7mo ago
  I submitted the post and I'm not affiliated with the brand in any way. I'm just interested in 3D-knitting tech.

Krei-se 7mo ago

My grandfather wrote a scifi utopia featuring printed-on-human garments similar to this ("Fahrt nach Futuras"). So you would wake up, wash then stand on some platform and have your daily outfit knitted on you. Not sure how he worked around the risk of strangling though lol. Still funny. Thanks making it reality!

mhb 7mo ago

They seem to have left out the most interesting part - what does that machine cost?

serf 7mo ago
yeah. I was waiting for at least some kind of portal into the actual engineering and craft of the thing due to the name of the article, and was left with an advertisement flavored sour aftertaste.

mastax 7mo ago

Uniqlo offers a few 3D knit items, I’ve been meaning to try them out. Pretty basic styles though.

patall 7mo ago

Would be cool if it could also de-knit to modify clothing or reuse later. I.e if there is a hole: automatically deknit, splice in a replacement and fix it. Or if your belly growth: deknit and make that section slightly wider. And can you use finer yarn as well, like lace? The reason a sweater is knit like it is, is because of the tradeoff between knitting time and material needed. But if labor becomes free, you should be able to knit much bigger yet more delicate stuff. Edit: ah, deknitting is called frogging

teiferer 7mo ago

Funny that they speak so negatively about "fast fashion". If anything I would expect on-demand clothes production contribute to an _increase_ in that phenomenon, rather than the opposite.

criticas 7mo ago
Not at these prices :-) $150 - $200 for a sweater is not cheap. I think of fast fashion in terms of "how many times do I have to wear it to get my money's worth?" If the answer is less than the number of times I'd wear it in a year, it's fast fashion. Of course, if you're a thrift shop shopper, most fashion is fast fashion.

criticas 7mo ago

What a thoroughly modern world we live in. My first reaction was to check if this was an April Fool's blog post.

jaustin 7mo ago

Can anyone else comment on the durability claims here - I wear a lot of knitwear but in my experience it is almost never the case that they fail at the seams. Is the cut/sew mechanism of fabrication part of the weakening? (my jumpers tent to either wear through in elbows (patchable!) or ultimately get nicked/cut by something like a branch I failed to avoid).

amluto 7mo ago
I’ve seen quite a few pathetic failures of the cool modern ultrasonic-welded seams and also pathetic failures of high end well known athletic brands. But a competently sewn seam really ought to last at least as long as the fabric.

kdazzle 7mo ago

I'm kind of in this space - 3d knitting is pretty interesting, but knitting a sweater like that takes a long time (I forget how long, but I think it's 1-2 hours), so it's not really a solution for working at any sort of scale. Unless you build up inventory or have a ton of machines. But the machines are super expensive compared to regular knitting machines. I also think that wholegarment knits look kind of cheap and that sewing actually adds structural integrity and durability to a garment. But anything knitting or clothes related is really fun and challenging and good for them for making a business out of it.

janeerie 7mo ago
"I also think that wholegarment knits look kind of cheap and that sewing actually adds structural integrity and durability to a garment." This is an ongoing discussion in the handknitting community. Knitters generally hate seaming (we're not sewers!) so the most popular patterns tend to be seamless. However, many argue that this leads to shapeless, saggy garments that aren't as wearable.
- kdazzle 7mo ago
  Fully fashioned hand knit stuff looks great! I just haven’t seen a wholegarment machine knit shirt that looks nice. Maybe because the yarn isn’t as chunky.

olejorgenb 7mo ago

"Most important 3D-knitting offers the promise of customization, or as we call it, the chipotle effect. Size and fit are the number one reasons people return clothes purchased online and in person. In the next few years, maybe even months, we'll be able to solve that problem for good. Since 3D-knitting allows us to knit on demand, we'll soon be able to offer every size imaginable in every style, material, and color." I had hoped they provided this already.