A 3D printing technology has opened a door to a broad field of inventions. Experiments are carried on to be applied in medicine for printing of tooth implants, bone casts, even bones themselves and inner organs and body parts. In architecture and design – for printing houses, their blocks and interior items. There are confectionary 3D printers and those using plastic as a material. Now the time of a new material came.

A professor from the CMU, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Scott Hudson together with Disney Research Pittsburgh has found out a way how to use yarn and felt for the material of a 3D printer. The printer itself is more like a sewing machine, and the process itself is like needle felting. Bits of fibers are pressed together by a barb needle and the object layers are created.

“Hand-knitted” scarves, hats, fluffy toys and simply objects are produced as a result. Any shape can be done like that thanks to the computer modeling of the object. Anyhow, the printer still needs improvements, and the creator searches for the new ways of using it. If the story have a continuation and if old women use printers instead of knitting needles, we’ll find out in the course of time.