Computational Design and Fabrication of 3D Printed Zippers Connecting 3D Textile Structures

Zippers have long been used for connecting and disconnecting two textiles repeatedly and easily. However, many industrial zippers cannot retain their shape after assembly, limiting the potential use of connecting soft textiles to form 3D shapes with large and various curvatures. Thus, we present a method to design and fabricate interlocking 3D printable zippers that can encode post-assembly shapes. The user first gives a target 3D shape divided into developable patches (i.e., curved surfaces unrollable like paper). Then, our design software built on Rhino/Grasshopper computes an interlocking zipper on the boundary curve of the patches. The user 3D prints the zipper in a flat state and welds it to the edge of the textiles by thermal bonding, which can zip into a target 3D shape. In this demo, we report our method and exhibit design examples of 3D printed zippers.