Skip to main content

Ford’s 3D knitting tech ensures your seats won’t burst at the seams

Ford: 3D knitting - The Future of Interior Fabrics

The process of making seat covers hasn’t changed significantly for decades, according to Ford. The Blue Oval hopes to pelt its upholstery department into the 21st century thanks to 3D knitting technology that opens up a world of opportunities.

Recommended Videos

Regardless of what you drive, and whether your seats are upholstered with cloth, leather, or a blend of both, you sit on numerous small pieces of upholstery that machines stitch together into a cover. The 3D knitting technology Ford is experimenting with creates one big, seamless cover that fits neatly over the frame, the foam, and the other parts that make up the rest of the seat. It works a lot like 3D printing, as its name implies, and it is already used in a variety of other sectors.

Ford’s interior engineers start by taking a long list of measurements. The 3D knitting machine needs to know the height, the width, and the length of the seat bottom, among other parameters. They feed these data points into a software, load the machine with the required thread, push a button, and wait for the final product to come out. Diana Kovacheva, one of Ford’s color and material designers, explained making a seat cover by hand can take up to a day; the 3D knitter does it in an hour.

Saving time is a boon, but 3D knitting technology also reduces waste, because the machine knows the exact amount of thread required to make a cover. It never needs to cut fabric. The end result is a cleaner-looking, seamless seat cover that requires less effort and fewer materials to make. Why stop there, though? Ford explained this technology will let it experiment with new shapes and materials not commonly found in a car; its video shows a front seat with storage pouches on its sides.

Looking further ahead, Ford believes 3D knitting will allow it to offer customers more customization options than ever before. An enthusiast might be able to pay extra for a Mustang-shaped insert in the seatback, for example, or get racing stripes that match the ones applied to the body. While this sounds cool, Ford hasn’t announced what’s next for the technology, and it hasn’t revealed the cost of 3D-knitting a seat cover.

Ronan Glon
Ronan Glon is an American automotive and tech journalist based in southern France. As a long-time contributor to Digital…
Fighting football injuries with 3D-printed, hyper-personalized pads
The Protect3d 3D scanning process.

If you’ve ever watched a movie about sports, you’ve seen it. It's that moment that occurs two-thirds of the way into the story, when the protagonists’ inevitable victory suddenly seems a lot less certain. Maybe the inspirational mentor winds up in the ER, muttering motivational slogans from a hospital bed. Perhaps the unorthodox coach wins over the team, only to be fired by management for thinking too far outside the box. Possibly the star lacrosse player has a crisis of faith and realizes he wants to be an acapella singer rather than a jock.

For the three co-founders of Protect3D, a real-life version of that moment took place between the second and fifth game of Duke University's football season several years ago, back when the company's founders were engineering students. The team’s starting quarterback was the recipient of a particularly tough sack during a game. He went down hard, and stayed down. Things looked bleak.

Read more
You won’t be taking Microsoft’s HoloLens 3 into the metaverse
Microsoft HoloLens 2

As rival Apple is rumored to be eyeing an entrance into the metaverse, Microsoft, an early proponent of mixed and augmented reality applications, is criticized for its blurry vision behind the company's own HoloLens strategy. While HoloLens notched big early wins, including scoring a U.S. Department of Defense contract, subsequent delays, project cancellations, and high-profile executive departures may have resulted in the death of the HoloLens 3. Still, despite a scathing profile by Business Insider, it appears that Microsoft remains, at least publicly, committed to its HoloLens endeavors for now. The company has gone on record to refute the publication's reporting that HoloLens 3 has been killed.

There are a number of factors that may be causing Microsoft to pivot from its early bet on HoloLens, but the Microsoft profile cited internal divisions and the lack of a unified strategy among the top reasons for concern. As a result of the chaos, it appears that the largest collateral damage to Microsoft's infighting is the cancellation of its next-generation HoloLens 3 hardware.

Read more
E3 2022 won’t happen in-person (and Summer Game Fest has already clapped back)
A purple E3 logo floats in the air.

For the third year in a row, E3 2022 will not happen as an in-person event. The Entertainment Software Association, which organizes the expo, has confirmed that the physical show has been cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the virus' new Omicron variant. In fact, the ESA didn't technically confirm that the show will happen in 2022 at all.

The news was broken by VentureBeat, which released a statement from the ESA regarding the yearly video game press conference. “Due to the ongoing health risks surrounding COVID-19 and its potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and attendees, E3 will not be held in person in 2022,” the ESA tells VentureBeat, “We are nonetheless excited about the future of E3 and look forward to announcing more details soon.”

Read more