3D Printer/Weaving Machine, Prints With Yarn

There are so many different types of 3D printers on the market today, but none of them can print in cloth like material. One College student named Oluwaseyi Sosanya has built his own 3D printer/weaving machine, capable of printing with yarn. It works somewhat like an FDM based 3D printer, but instead of melting plastic, it extrudes yarn which is woven around numerous metal vertical poles. More details on this printer can be found here: http://3dprint.com/7156/3d-weaving-machine/

Here is a look at some shoe soles 3D printed on this incredible machine. The yarn was hardened, but remains flexible after being dipped into a silicone liquid and dried.:
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/upload...-2-300x300.gif

Here is a look at the actual printer:
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/upload.../06/wove-1.jpg

So the yarn (in black) is coated in silicone (in orange) and then dragged through the weaving pattern and left to dry. This seems to eliminate the need for an extruder, actually. Even though it's quite limited in what forms it can print, and the "resolution" isn't really a thing, it seems to go very fast, and make some pretty interesting and useful structures.

I don't know if I would technically call it weaving? The layers are stuck together with silicone rather than interwoven... I can't think of anything better to call it though, so I guess it works.

Designer and engineer Oluwaseyi Sosanya has married the traditional art of weaving and 3D printing to arrive at a method of weaving materials from wool to cotton in three dimensions and sealing them in silicone to create a relatively rigid, yet flexible structure he says will one day create products from protective clothing to bulletproof vests to buildings. Sosanya says his weaving method is an ideal fusion of the ancient and the now. You can read the entire story here: http://3dprint.com/62721/sosanya-3d-printing-loom/


Below is a photo of Oluwaseyi Sosanya with his loom:
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/upload...5/sosanya.jpeg

very clever.
Also should be easy to scale it up to produce indutrial sized objects.
For example: compact mattresses for use in disaster relief.

If there were a way to cut the string and automatically re-start it, then this would really be going places, but as it is, the machine can only make one continuous feature per layer. If he wants to try making buildings with the technology like the article says, then that version of the loom would be much more sophisticated than what he has so far. Also, it doesn't look like there's much new information in the newer article, even though it has been a year since the first one.