ABRAXAS

INTERFACING FASHION AND TECHNICAL FABRICATION

Once a year, Carnegie Mellon students come together to produce a full-fledged fashion show that brings together students in collaboration to produce, model, and design a show. Having been chosen from a large pool of designer teams, two peers and I designed and fabricated ten "looks" to be showcased. The show took place on February 13th, 2016, giving us just 3 months to complete this 10 look collection.  On this team, I served as the resident mechanical engineer and was responsible for designing and fabricating articles by modeling them on Solidworks and lasercutting materials such as leather, acrylic, and paper to create cohesive looks. 

Because of this project's creative use of additive manufacturing, our team was awarded a $1000 educational grant from 3D printing giant Shapeways for the integration of 3D printed pieces in our line.

CONCEPT

In this collection, explore the organic female form through abstract mathematical concepts. Drawing inspiration from mathematical modeling software and geometric tessellation, our line integrates modular systems into flowing, natural forms.

Through the line, we aimed to deconstruct the classic female silhouette from simplified structures to organic flowing shapes. The transition from modular forms to organic curves portrays a metamorphosis of human figure and movement, highlighted by the progression from fitted two-dimensional designs on the feminine form to extruded three-dimensional geometries. As such, the materials used explore the intersection between traditional and nontraditional materials, including soft fabrics and meshes in addition to laser-cut and 3D printed plastics

3D PRINTING GRANT

Though our university gives us access to Cube Pro, MakerBot, and Stratasys fused deposition modeling machines, the grant we have been awarded from Shapeways allowed us to explore other additive processes including selective laser sintering and stereolithography and giving us access to metal printing. We used these manufacturing processes because the complexity of the geometric forms in our line constitute a more rigorous means of fabrication. With smooth curves and sharp angles, laser sintering allowed us to create complex forms without the need of support structures as in fused deposition modeling.

FABRICATION

Though this project was predominantly aesthetic in nature, as an engineer, I created many of my designs on Solidworks (my CAD package of choice), then creating 3D prototypes by laser-cutting fabrics and sewing them together. Having never used a sewing machine before, I quickly learned to use the machine as well as how to create organic 2D forms for three dimensions on a CAD package.