A decorating 3D Printing on cotton T-shirt utilizing fused deposited soft TPU material

Abstract The Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printing builds physical forms or parts by depositing fused thermoplastic substrates layer by layer with computer-aided manufacturing technology. Pure polymers or composites can be 3D printed with the material deposition FFF process. Many attempts have been presented in the literature to 3D print directly on textiles. Still, only a few reports the direct 3D printing process of soft thermoplastics upon a T-shirt for decorating it with a logo or a scheme. Note that the textiles have a specific structure with assembled fibers and are ranked as a discrete class of materials. This manuscript presents a critical study to 3D print soft TPU material in a T-shirt and discusses the pros and cons of the process for 3D printing of textiles.