Desktop Wet-Spinner

At the Hybrid Body Lab, I work with Jingwen Zhu. We developed a wetspinning machine that can fit in smaller scale places like makerspaces, homes, schools, etc. The goal is for people to DIY this machine and use it to wetspin functional threads (e.g. conductive, resistive, temperature/pH sensing). These threads are commonly used in electronic textiles, but commercially available functional threads are not sustainably made. Using this machine, functional threads can be spun using food-safe, biodegradable ingredients. Check out the GitHub page for this project here. Check out the DOI for the published paper here.

Since the machine is supposed to be accessible to make, all the parts can be purchased or 3D printed. I work on designing all the 3D parts and printing them using Fusion 360 and Open SCAD. Recently, I’ve made the machine operate significanty quieter and have improved the speed at which yarn can be spun. I created an animated assembly of the machine in Fusion 360. Here is a drawing of the latest version:

We have conducted workshops to identify how textile artists approach this machine. Through their feedback, we have improved the machine by incorporating familiar interfaces commonly used in other textile machines, like a foot pedal.

Overall, I love working on the machine and have learned a lot in the process!

Technologies Used: Fusion 360, Open SCAD, 3D Printing