Intro:

I came up with the idea for this tie after I had tried printing some chainmail designed by Flowalistik. After printing and playing with it for a bit I was thinking about what kind of applications it could have in fabric like objects being printed in their final shape. I thought awhile on what object would be a good experiment design and eventually landed on making a tie.

Getting started:

For designing the tie I used fusion 360 and wanted to try taking advantage of the fusion 360 timeline to help with future edits. My first attempt at making the tie I had designed each part in a separate file and imported them into a tie model. After printing my first design I realized I incorrectly copied the chain link design and every link had failed bridging. Because I didn’t have each link in one file and didn’t have the completed tie referencing these original parts I would have to either start over or edit each and every link. I decided to start over and make the hole tie in one file. I read up on good practices when designing in fusion 360 and stumbled across a nice trick that made positioning each link less of a headache. Each chain link is offset by 7.5mm in the x-axes and 7.5mm in the y-axes. In my first design I was manually entering this amount for every link. On my second design I set the parts to snap to the grid in 7.5mm increments and could position the links by dragging the move arrows on the part.

Chain link orientation/ mods:

When starting any project I try to sit and write out all the constraints. I found that this chainmail design bent better in some directions rather than others. I figured orientating the chainmail so the tie would prefer bending with your shirt when you sit would make the most sense. This decision however showed a new complication. There are two ways to make a strate outer edge with the chain links. The way the original model builds its edges is by having each edge link connect to the edge link. The way I now had to orient the straight edges to get the kind of flexibility I wanted ment that each edge link would only connect to the next layer in and not the next edge link. Because of this I had to design custom edge peces not just for the straight edges but also every corner and diagonal part of the tie where it gets slimmer.

Designing the top knot:

When I first made the tie I didn’t put much thought to the top knot other than I wanted it to look like a real tie knot. To get this effect I just downloaded a tie model off of turbo squid and in blender removed the neck strap and front flap to the tie. However after posting the tie on r/3dprinting I found out there is a large culture around ties and there are hundreds of tie knots. In future iterations I’m thinking of adding some more elegant tie knots.