3D Printing T-Shirt Designs

Usually, t-shirt designs are screen printed, but that’s so old school. You have to make the silkscreen and then rub paint all over – it’s clearly a technique meant for the past. Well, fear not, as [RCLifeOn] is here to bring us to the future with 3D Printed T-Shirt Designs.

[RCLifeOn] affixes t-shirts to his print build platform and boom: you’ve got 3D printed graphics. He started by using PLA which, while it looked great, wasn’t up to a tussle with a washing machine. However, he quickly moved on to NinjaFlex which fended much better in a wash cycle. While the NinjaFlex washed better, [RCLifeOn] did have some issues getting the NinjaFlex to adhere to the t-shirt. With a little persistence and some settings tweaking, he was able to come out ahead with a durable and aesthetically pleasing result.

Now, 3D printing isn’t going to replace screen printing, but it’s also not going to replace injection molding. What 3D printing lacks in speed and efficiency, it makes up in setup time & cost. In other words, if you need 50 t-shirts of the same design, screen printing is the way to go. But, if you need 50 shirts, each with a different design, you just might want to follow in [RCLifeOn’s] footsteps.

Anyways, we don’t have much on 3D printing t-shirts, but we do have other useful information on 3D printing slinkys and 3D printing project enclosures. And, if you’d rather do it the old-school way, we can show you how to silkscreen all the things.

Filed under: 3d Printer hacks

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