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Your Next Pair of Walmart Pants Could Be 3D Woven

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: We've been ableto design and 3D-print plastic phone cases and toys at home for a decade now. For almost every other consumer product made in a factory, the robots have taken over the heavy lifting. But fashion is still stuck in the 20th century. Take a...

Now, Walmart is piloting a project with the San Francisco Bay area startup Unspun to test whether it can manufacture the retailer's in-house brand of chinos in the US using a technology called 3D weaving. While still very much in the prototype phase -- the two companies are exploring how to use Unspun's technology to supply pants to Walmart's stores -- if successful, this project could upend the way apparel is manufactured on a huge scale. Unspun hopes to eventually deploy 3D weaving micro-factories throughout the United States, so that anyone can order custom and locally made apparel on demand.

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