Royal College of Art Student, Oluwaseyi Sosanya has developed a new process that can 3-D print impact-resistant materials using cotton yarn, liquified silicon, and hardware from the Industrial revolution.

Oluwaseyi Sosanya wants his material to provide defense against blunt impacts, stabs, and lacerations with a single continuous line of yarn. He believes these three dimensional piece of material could be the ideal body armour for many first responders.

Sosanya and his partner Weaver Sophie Zajicek started experimenting with traditional looms together but the duo later discovered that the two dimensional tapestries wouldn't be able to achieve their tactical goal and hence saw the need for a custom tool to be developed.

He combined designed concepts from domestic sewing and knitting machines, with custom machine control software borrowed from 3-D printers and was able to control the placement and structure of the yarn in three dimensions. This freedom allows designs to create crumple zones that absorb and distribute force with minimal amount of injury to the wearer.

The first demonstration of Sosanya's incredible work has been demonstrated with a pair of shoe that has been outfitted with woven soles that have an unorthodox appearance, but posses performance characteristics like that of the popular sneakers foot wears.

Culled from : http://www.lordbnf.com/2014/07/3-d-printed-body-fabric-thats-made-of.html