Hydra is a bolero jacket designed to create an affordable luxury fashion item with the use of 3D printing technology. The design of Hydra is inspired by reptile skin and tries to create a secondary skin for humans to add ornate and protective qualities. The form of the scale is inspired by the geometry of the scales of reptiles and fish that have evolved to allow for flexible movement while providing protective armour. The design of the jackets can be customized by varying the pattern and colour. Following the contour of the body, each scale is unique in its shape and size to provide seamless continuous flow of pattern. The design of Hydra skin has three elements, the scale, perforation and recursive texture.  The base geometry of the scale component follows the UV direction of the bolero jacket surface. The use of attractor points and the contour of the surface result in variation within the base modules. The secondary recursive pattern is applied on top of the selected area of the overall scales. This additional detail adds extra layer of articulation and variation in the design. This high degree of customization can only be achieved at an affordable cost with advanced fabrication technology such as 3D printing. With the use of digital tools combined with advanced technology, it is feasible to distribute the workload at the front end of the design so that each bolero jacket can be a unique peace while minimizing the production efforts. Colour of the jacket is also thought to be customizable and multiple colours can be used to introduce further variation in the design. The bolero jacket is intended to be fabricated as a single 3D print using SLA Flex with Mammoth Stereolithography machine by Materialise. The single printing can eliminate the manual work during the fabrication process. However, in case it this not feasible, the jacket can be printed in patches and assembled together as shown in the diagram.

Reference:

Mammoth Stereolithography machine

http://manufacturing.materialise.com/mammoth-stereolithography

SLA Flex material

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB92mNAKwOA