Your Next Pair of Walmart Pants Could Be 3D Woven (wired.com) 38
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: We've been ableto design and 3D-print plastic phone cases and toys at home for a decade now. For almost every other consumer product made in a factory, the robots have taken over the heavy lifting. But fashion is still stuck in the 20th century. Take a typical pair of chinos. Cotton threads are woven on a large loom at a mill somewhere in Asia, then shipped to a dye house, then shipped (usually a great distance) to a garment factory somewhere else in Asia. There, the fabric is laid flat and cut into shapes, with the excess fabric being landfilled, incinerated, or (very rarely) recycled. Underpaid and exploited garment workers hand-sew those pieces of fabric into pants, which are then shipped across the ocean to a fulfillment warehouse or a store near you. This global apparel supply chain is inefficient and emissions-heavy -- an estimated 4 percent of global waste and 2 to 4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to fashion production. Brands have to make risky predictions many months in advance about which items will sell, leading them to over order on a massive scale.
Now, Walmart is piloting a project with the San Francisco Bay area startup Unspun to test whether it can manufacture the retailer's in-house brand of chinos in the US using a technology called 3D weaving. The experiment is part of a push to nearshore Walmart's supply chain and cut down on emissions and waste associated with textile production. While still very much in the prototype phase -- the two companies are exploring how to use Unspun's technology to supply pants to Walmart's stores -- if successful, this project could upend the way apparel is manufactured on a huge scale. Unspun hopes to eventually deploy 3D weaving micro-factories throughout the United States, so that anyone can order custom and locally made apparel on demand.
Now, Walmart is piloting a project with the San Francisco Bay area startup Unspun to test whether it can manufacture the retailer's in-house brand of chinos in the US using a technology called 3D weaving. The experiment is part of a push to nearshore Walmart's supply chain and cut down on emissions and waste associated with textile production. While still very much in the prototype phase -- the two companies are exploring how to use Unspun's technology to supply pants to Walmart's stores -- if successful, this project could upend the way apparel is manufactured on a huge scale. Unspun hopes to eventually deploy 3D weaving micro-factories throughout the United States, so that anyone can order custom and locally made apparel on demand.
Thumbs up (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Thumbs up (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, by on-shoring manufacture you create a driver to address the next part - Just in Time manufacturing rather than the current Just In Case, to stop the creation of all non-display, non-sold items that are also currently destined for landfilled/recycling/incineration.
Lastly, the technology (if successful of course) could be exported for use in any country also wanting to reduce environmental impact (and potentially their trade deficit).
Re: (Score:3)
I guarantee environmental impact isn't even a factor here. This technology is going to be used to create cheaper clothes that fall apart sooner. They're not going to do it on-shore, they're going to do it in Bangladesh or Nigeria. This is Walmart, where they need prices to be low, even at the expense of quality.
If you're wearing pants more than a year old, that's a big missed opportunity for Walmart. You should really be buying new clothes every 90 days... or dare I say, subscribe to your clothes?
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the remainder goes to landfill or burnt
In general, industries actually *do* try and save costs. I would expect the remainder goes to the shredder and becomes lining and felt material.
This is weaving, not knitting (Score:3)
Complex 3d shapes are made today by knitting machines. We use it them for lots of styles of shirts. socks, etc. They tend to produce a stretchable fabric which, while nice in golf shirt, is not what you want in your chinos.
Seamless socks are available, try a different retailer.
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Re:Thumbs up (Score:5, Funny)
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The next evolution, obviously. (Score:3)
Now I really can have SpongeBob (Score:1)
Squarepants!
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That depends on which state you live in.
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Just tell them you had a workplace cubicle accident.
Please don't ... (Score:2)
Re: Walmart & ugly shoppers (Score:2)
This is Slashdot, you are throwing rocks in glass underwear.
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This is Slashdot, you are throwing rocks in glass underwear.
Slashdotters have the decency to stay in their basements. Walmart shoppers are evil enough to parade their lunacy around in public. We're free to look down our noses at them, if we can still lift our heads.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean what some posters on /. look like in Real Life?
3d textiles are really old... (Score:2)
But since the 3d-woven stuff is significantly more expensive than the conventional textiles sewn by children in far away sweat shops, it has not conquered a significant market share, and given how "ultra fast fashion" goes exactly the opposite way, it's unlikely this will ever become "mainstream".
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Well, they claim they're 4x the speed of 3d-woven stuff. For me... i'm not moved by the environmental issues, but if the quality is decent, and "made in the USA" and the price is ok... i'd go for it.
The Walmart partnership seems strange to me though since this is more something to start at the tech early adopter types at a somewhat premium price and then move it more broadly. (OTOH i prob shouldn't presume to tell Walmart how to make money. they're much much better at it than i am)
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' i'm not moved by the environmental issues, '
How can you not be? I'm always very confused by people that make statements like this. Do you not have children, or other family members with children, that you would like to grow to live a healthy life and carry on the family line?
Whenever I see that explicitly expressed the first thing I think is 'That is the kind of misanthrope that I would not want in my community.'.
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Well, i care about stuff like clean air and clean water, hormone disruptors, microplastics, noise, etc. CO2 and global warming... less. But in all cases scale matters.
In this case the article says that normal pants have 14% fabric waste and this process has 3% fabric waste. That sounds nice, but incremental and on dimensions that aren't particularly important.
More importantly it's only a very minor aspect of the "robots make [eventually] custom sized pants for [relatively] cheap!" story. So top of in
How about (Score:2)
If we 3D-wove them, are they really even children?
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Negative, they are meat popsicles.
Re: How about (Score:2)
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$215 bucks for a pair of jeans (Score:2)
no plastic fiber (Score:2)
Cost? (Score:2)
Exactly how much will they cost, and no, you cannot declare power for the printers "externalities".
And are they going to print cotton/linen/etc, or are they printing plastic clothes?
The hole IS the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. (Score:2)
Great! I'll add these 3D-woven clothes to my existing large collection of useful 3D-printed objects, which contains:
Fashions (Score:3)
"Brands have to make risky predictions many months in advance about which items will sell..." Which presumably depends on which fashions come (and which go). If we could just get rid of the silly notion of "this year's fashions", that would cease to be an issue. Are this year's fashions any better than last year's?
And as a boomer, I like that idea, as all my high school clothes can come out of the closet (which tbh they already have done).
Back to the future!
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> Are this year's fashions any better than last year's?
Yes, they are more current. Next question?