The Potential Use of PLA and Soft PLA in 3D Printing for Sustainable Wearables

Abstract

Introduction and Background. In recent years, 3D printing, a form of additive manufacturing, has been widely used in various industries. Especially in the fashion industry, 3D printing has been primarily explored by innovative product design and development leaders to manufacture wearable products. For example, Nike utilized 3D printing to design cleat plates in their Vapor Laser Talon shoes, which greatly sped up the traditional manufacturing process (Molitch-Hou, 2016). 3D printing also plays a significant role in sustainability practices (Woodson, 2015). For instance, a sustainable manufacturing process can be achieved by using 3D printing materials that have a less negative impact on the environment (Wijk & Wijk, 2015).Polylactide (PLA) is the most widely used plastic filament material in 3D printing, which is biodegradable and can be produced with renewable resources such as potatoes, sugarcane, and soybeans (Wijk & Wijk, 2015). Soft PLA is a special type of PLA that is more flexible than traditional PLA and still biodegradable (All3DP, 2019). Although an increasing number of studies have explored the potential use of 3D printed textiles for wearable products (e.g., Beecroft, 2019;Pattinson et al., 2019;Uysal & Stubbs, 2019), only a few studies applied PLA or soft PLA in developing 3D layered structure textiles. Uysal and Stubbs (2019) demonstrated a great benefit of using this layered structure for 3D printed textiles, which greatly reduces the material waste. Grames (2020) argued that the height of each layer of 3D printed materials influences the appearance of 3D printed products. However, no previous studies have investigated the appearance change of 3D layered printed textiles with different layer heights. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the possibility of using 3D printed layered structure textiles with PLA and soft PLA for developing sustainable wearables.Study Design. Using an entry-level fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer, this study applied the research through design (RTD) methodology to prototype 3D layered structure textiles with the biodegradable material (PLA and soft PLA) and different layer heights (0.2mm and 0.28mm). For this experiment, Rhino and Cura programs were used to develop 3D models of layered structure textiles that were based on the 3D printed textile proposed by Pattinson et al. (2019). The layered structure textile consists of repeated cells; each cell has an identical size of 9.5mm x 9.5mm with a thickness of 0.4mm. The wave pattern utilized in the cells allows the 3D textile to be stretched in multiple directions.Four prototypes of 3D layered structure textiles with two different materials and two layer heights were created for this experiment. Each prototype was printed as follows: (a) Prototype A: PLA with 0.2mm layer height extruded by the 3D printer; (b) Prototype B: PLA with 0.28mm layer height; (c) Prototype C: soft PLA with 0.2mm layer height; and (d) Prototype D: soft PLA with 0.28mm layer height.