CategoryTextiles

Non wovens

Felt

http://www.hardy-hanson.co.uk/index.htm

http://www.sefelt.com/home.htm

Knitted

Woven

Embroidered

E-Textiles

E-Textiles are Electronic Textiles, also known as Smart Textiles. They are fabrics that have electronics woven into them, with the physical flexibility and size of normal fabrics. The electric circuit, and its components and interconnections, are intrinsic to the fabric, and are therefore less visible and not susceptible to becoming tangled or snagged. Usually fabric is woven using normal yarns and special conductive yarns.

They key to the success of new electronic devices are how simple and natural they are to interact with, and their adaptability to everyday life. Textiles play a central role in human life from a young age – their soft, tactile quality is completely opposite to the hard, complex nature of standard electronic goods. The converging of these two areas will allow technology be integrated into new areas of our lifestyle, particularly in the form of wearable computing, but will also allow radically different electronic products to be created, informed by how we wear and relate to textiles.

Electrically conductive Lame jackets are worn by foil and sabre fencers. Each time the other fencer’s weapon hits the jacket a sensor relays the hit to a scoring machine, which counts the numbers of hits overall to each fencer.

Burton Snowboarding equipment collaborated with SoftSwitch^? technology to create the Burton Amp Backpack. The soft, flexible control pad of the iPod is integrated into the strap of the backpack, using stroke sensitive yarns. Your head phones are connected to the iPod by wireless Bluetooth technology. The SoftSwitch^? can also integrate LED lights or beeps as visual/aural feedback, the system mounted on a flexible printed circuit board.

Thermochromic ink registers body heat (and therefore physical touch) and fades over time.

Capacitive sensor and IR reflectance sensor detect contact of hands, objects.

One way for e-textiles to be used is in the world of fitness: several different ways of measuring body movement through special electronic clothing have been developed. Bio monitoring senses the body’s movement through electrical activity levels in the skin. Accelerometers detect shaking and tilting, meaning even simple changes in posture and gait can be detected.

E-textiles have also been developed that can sense the location and physical state of the user, for use in military or the fire service, by using an ultrasonic emitter, IR Remote control protocol or Bluetooth technology.

It is partly the development of thin, flexible, lightweight batteries that has made the possibility of e-textiles in everyday life more feasible. Ultralife Polymer rechargeable batteries can be designed around products, to fit into tiny, inconspicuous spaces. A more eco-friendly option for e-textiles is solar panels. Iowa Think Film Technology has developed solar power collecting panels that have the weight and texture of a thin, flexible sheet of plastic. It has been used by the US military on tents and temporary shelters, but could easily be adapted for civilian use.

E-textiles will slowly become incorporated into normal life – firstly through the arenas of health, safety and fitness, and inevitably into the world of fashion and interiors. Designers must collaborate with scientists and electronics specialists to develop e-textiles, and ways of applying and integrating them to fill real life requirements and desires so that they are simple and enjoyable to use.

Conductive yarn available from: http://members.shaw.ca/ubik/thread/

E-textiles projects:

http://xslabs.net/

http://www.ifmachines.com/

http://www.koyono.com/products/blackcoat_work/specs.html

http://www.softswitch.co.uk

http://www.smartextiles.co.uk/

-- RachelWingfield - 15 Mar 2006