Consumer Items

Fashion Items and Home Furnishings
Custom jewelry has long been made using rapid prototyping to create wax and other types of patterns for transfer into precious metals. Solidscape Inc., Envisiontec GmbH (Germany) and also Roland DGA (Japan) with its subtractive rapid prototyping (SRP) technology, have placed emphasis on this market segment. While some jewelry has been made directly by additive fabrication, it's likely that one or another transfer process will be used for the foreseeable future until jewelry-specific materials become available. However, processes have been proposed which would provide near-term compromise solutions to the problem of custom manufacture of personalized charms, replicas and other items. For example, the patterns created by additive fabrication can be electroplated and subsequently melted away to leave a likeness of a person or other object.

Other fashion items are also possible, of course, with shoes often mentioned. These range from the practicality of running shoes to shoes for the fashion runway. Fashion accessories for the home are also possible, in the form of custom lampshades and furnishings. One company in the forefront of this movement is Freedom of Creation (FOC) (Netherlands).

FOC has worked on a wide range of items, including RP-generated fabric, customized lighting and furnishings. The company has introduced concepts for lightweight, strong and translucent furniture. For example, a stool designed by FOC features a honeycomb-like architecture, and is strong and rigid enough to permit direct fabrication of a useable item by stereolithography. Vogt + Weizenegger, GmbH (Germany) has developed the Sinterchair. As the name implies, this product is fabricated in polyamide resin on a selective laser sintering machine and assembled from six individually fabricated parts. It also uses a honeycomb structure and is easy to scale up or down in size. Doll house models and children's chairs can be fabricated simply by scaling the data. These experiments are but the first small steps on a long road to commercialization for RM-fabricated household goods.

Textiles
The long-term possibilities for additive fabrication of fabrics and textiles take advantage of several of its unique qualities. Accessory items such as zippers, grommets and belts can be fabricated right along with a garment to either lower costs and/or provide unique designs. It may also be possible to fabricate the garment in the folded state, as well as its addressed shipping package at same time. One of the most interesting possibilities is to create textiles and garment designs that are so intricate and unique it will be impossible to "knock them off." Copying is a major problem for designer labels. Rapid manufacturing may be the way to make many types of designer goods impossible to counterfeit while adding cachet.

It will be a long time before additive fabrication can compete with today's enormous range and fine qualities of woven materials, or the low costs attendant with an industry of such maturity on the basis of consumer fashion alone. However, textiles and fabrics are useful in medical implants and industrial applications such as catalyst substrates and heat exchangers. Higher-value applications like these might provide impetus to move the field forward more quickly than might otherwise be expected.

Specialized military and other smart (as in intelligent as opposed to fashionable) protective clothing may also be a propelling force. Sensors, smart materials, safety monitoring and communication equipment may be incorporated directly into fabrics to protect against biological or environmental threats. Active exo-skeletons may be incorporated into clothing as force multipliers for soldiers [8]. It may sound like a Brave New World, but it's on the way.