More on 3D printing tools for other tasks - this time for cording/ropemaking.
Why did I need to do this? Late last year I put in a proposal for a data art project. I had recently run a Japanese braiding / Kumihimo workshop with Jake T, another member of the DoES Liverpool community, and I thought this could be a good way to show data e.g. by including horizontal bars in the braids, like bar charts. We’d already used 3D printing and laser cutting to produce Kumihimo disks.
However, once the project started, one of the organisers told me about a system of knots and cords, called Quipu, used for record keeping by various South American cultures, including the Inca empire. This seemed made for the job, so I moved to using that.
My first step was to 3D print a small maquette, and to attach twisted cords, each made up of 2 colours, one representing place, and one the type of data collected.
I set to work twisting cotton yarn by hand (see “Making the Primary Cord” in , realising quickly that this wasn’t going to be a practical method for the project, for me or the 10 - 11 year olds who would be creating the final cords with data.
There are actually quite a lot of options around, including hair braiders, embroidery and jewellery corders, and even using an electic mixer.
I knew there would be 3D printed versions and soon found this 4 hook drill attachment by @dreamingrobots, with useful how-to video, on . I printed it, and put it together with the addition of some cheap cup hooks from the local hardware store, and grease to reduce friction.
I used some of these suckers, which a member of the DoES Liverpool community had donated a while ago, to hold the other end of the yarn.
It worked excellently and produced a small number of really nice cords, before jamming and never working again. Hint: don’t use PLA for fastish moving parts as it has a low melting point.
I printed another attachment, this time using PETG and a remix of the original files with added chamfers “to make them work better”.
and tried it out on various materials for potential use in my project:
This is a quipu in corded crochet cotton, reading “2026” (if you can’t wait until my next post, there are some simple instructions on creating Quipus on the Lafavre website):
Cording with thick strips of stretch polyester jersey (donated by Sanna King of Circular Arts Network LCR) created lovely tactile and colourful pieces):
This one was with wool:
Following this experimentation, I thought it might be safer to have hand wound cord winders when dealing with a large group of school children, and printed several of these - also a remix of the Dreaming Robots version.
I tested them on two 10 year olds who came along to a DoES Liverpool Maker Day, improvising a Rope Walk between 2 desks; neither took too long to create a cord.
The suckers did come unstuck, more than I’d noticed when I was using them, so I screwed them on to pieces of wood and ordered some plastic clamps to attach them to desks:
I had intended using unwanted yarn for the event, but it was difficult to get the quantity or colours that I wanted; I ended up ordering t shirt yarn, which is made from pre-consumer waste in the garment industry. It did vary in thickness which made some of the cords uneven and thicker than I’d wanted. If I was going to use it again I would try to get all of it in the same thickness, or cut it so that it was.
On the event day, creating the cords (and then using them as improvised skipping ropes) was the part that the schoolkids liked best. Fortunately I had printed 6 hand winders - all but one of them broke as I’d been unable to get the hex shafts to fit if printed horizontally and ended up printing them standing up, meaning they were weaker than they should have been.
The Saturday was Family Day, and with several excellent Liverpool University student volunteers to provide closer supervision, we were able to get a steady stream of children making thick skipping ropes using the electric drill attachment. Here’s Mark and Warren from DoES Liverpool, with their respective daughters and colourful t shirt yarn ropes:
What’s next?
Ropemaking seems like a really enjoyable activity for all ages; I’m hoping to run more workshops on it (and possibly Quipu too!).
I’d like to research what unwanted yarn is available and can’t be used for things like clothing e.g. carpet wool, which is rough and, prior to cording, not very strong
I’d like to try out other materials such as plastic strips (I know you can hand twine plastic bags into “Plarn” but this has always seemed a bit labour intensive) and torn strips from unwanted fabrics like wornout sheets.`
Mike G was able to print hex shafts horizontally and then sand them to fit - I’ll carry on using the current ones for the moment but aim to try more variations. This drill attachment version uses metal bearings and an allen key instead of a drill bit.