Tinkering with clothes to produce 3-D robotic knitting machine of the future
BOSTON: Gihan Amarasiriwardena has always been a hacker, but not the traditional kind: He hacks clothing and outdoor gear. Since adolescence, he’s cobbled together custom waterproof jackets, heat-trapping sleeping bags, and performance dress shirts.
In 2012, that hobby led Amarasiriwardena to cofound, with other MIT clothing tinkerers, Ministry of Supply, a Boston-based innovator of high-tech fashion. The company has developed a rapidly growing science-based clothing line and the industry’s first 3-D robotic knitting machine.
“The mission and vision of this company is inventing apparel. It’s very MIT in that regard. Instead of hacking code, we’re hacking fibres,” says Amarasiriwardena, who cofounded Ministry of Supply with MITSloan School of Management students Aman Advani and Kit Hickey MBA, and mechanical engineering alumnus Kevin Rustagi.
Having last year expanded nationwide, both online and to nine retail locations, Ministry sells about 100,000 products annually, ranging from aerospace-tech dress shirts to socks that use coffee grounds to mitigate odour. In April, the start-up launched the fashion industry’s first machine designed to 3-D-knit personalised blazers on demand. Customers can plug blazer customisations — such as size, and yarn, button, and cuff colour — into a computer at the machine, a 10-foot-long printer set up near the checkout counter of Ministry’s Newbury Street headquarters.
An image appears on an interactive display, and modifications can be made on the fly. Inside the machine, four beds with 4,000 needles each pull yarn to knit the garment. In about 90 minutes, the machine spits out a blazer that stays at the store a couple days for finishing touches such as steaming and shrinking. According to the start-up, the machine eliminates about 30 per cent of the fabric waste of traditional cut-and-sew methods. — MIT News