PunchPrint

New printing strategies have enabled 3D-printed materials that imitate traditional textiles. These flament-based textiles are easy to fabricate but lack the look and feel of fber textiles. We seek to augment 3D-printed textiles with needlecraft to produce composite materials that integrate the programmability of additive fabrication with the richness of traditional textile craft. We present PunchPrint: a technique for integrating fber and flament in a textile by com- bining punch needle embroidery and 3D printing. Using a toolpath that imitates textile weave structure, we print a fexible fabric that provides a substrate for punch needle production. We evaluate our material’s robustness through tensile strength and needle compat- ibility tests. We integrate our technique into a parametric design tool and produce functional artifacts that show how PunchPrint broadens punch needle craft by reducing labor in small, detailed artifacts, enabling the integration of openings and multiple yarn weights, and scafolding soft 3D structures.