Priorities change

September 9, 2016  |  My Take

I am writing this while visiting at an army installation; I’ve visited others, as well. I didn’t grow up around the military, so it’s all a little new to me, and it’s impressive. I don’t get to see the inner workings of the Army, but I’ve met quite a few soldiers and I’ve learned a &he…
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Small scale, big ideas

August 5, 2016  |  My Take

The Minnesota Vikings football team now has a new $1 billion stadium that boasts the largest transparent ethylene-tetraflouroethylene (ETFE) roof in the nation. This relatively new structural fabric doesn’t degrade under UV light, atmospheric pollution or extreme temperatures. It’s expected to l…
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Not an oxymoron

July 8, 2016  |  My Take

Here’s a conversation about protective textiles with someone not in the business. I say, “I’m writing a short piece that has to do with protective textiles.” “Protective textiles. Sounds like an oxymoron.” He smiles. “You’ve heard of raincoats, perhaps? Awnings? Insect netting?&#8221…
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Testing…testing…

June 10, 2016  |  My Take

This month our featured articles are about standards and testing to those standards. This is a big topic. No, it’s huge. There are so many ways to approach this—and so many individual performance requirements—that we could easily have dozens of articles, each one covering a different requireme…
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The movement of continents

May 6, 2016  |  My Take

Have you noticed how many people are wearing Fitbits? Have you noticed, too, how they are not all plain black anymore? How attractive they are, or are not, has nothing to do with the product’s function, but it has quite a bit to do with who will wear them, and that means commercial success—or no…
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Best timing of a news release ever

April 8, 2016  |  My Take

By now, I would suppose that all you have to say to those in the textile industry is “$317 million” and they’ll know what you’re talking about. Last Friday the U.S. Dept. of Defense and MIT announced a consortium including academia, industry and government established to research and manufac…
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A PV resurgence?

March 4, 2016  |  My Take

For a long time, flexible photovoltaics (PV) have struggled to claim their share of the PV market. Rigid substrates have dominated since they first became available, large-scale, in the late 1970s and 1980s. Strangely enough, the technology did not change for a long time, and is not radically differ…
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Learning something new every day

February 5, 2016  |  My Take

I learned something new writing this month’s features. (Well, I always learn something new preparing copy for this publication.) But this revelation helped me see innovation in a new light. Our topic this month is coatings and finishes, and the feature will run in two parts. I talked to coaters as…
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The real Martians

January 8, 2016  |  My Take

Members of NASA’s materials team were on hand at IFAI’s Expo last fall–and with good reason. The agency needs the textiles industry to reach their goal of a manned mission to Mars sometime in the 2030s. In fact, Evelyne Orndoff told her audience in her keynote address, “We can’t do it with…
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Protective textiles: not an oxymoron

December 4, 2015  |  My Take

When the average person thinks of safety and protective products, I doubt that he or she thinks “fabric.” Used for clothing, bedding and curtains, in their world, fabrics are soft, flexible and lightweight–not the sort of material that could protect from fire or hazardous chemicals, much less …
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