Manufacturing — Software turns knitting machines into 3D printers

Software turns knitting machines into 3D printers A knitted rabbit, created using the technology(Credit: Carnegie Mellon University) Ordinarily, programming an industrial knitting machine to knit a certain type of item is quite a complex process. As a result, they're generally not used to create one-offs. That could change, though, thanks to new software that tells them how to knit custom 3D objects. The program was developed by a Carnegie Mellon University team led by assistant professor James McCann. Basically, it takes computer models of three-dimensional objects (in the form of 3D meshes), and automatically converts them into stitch-by-stitch instructions that...