Features Archives

Smart fibers: past, present and future

November 24, 2014 | Features

From spider silk to bio-fabrics, the future of fiber has endless possibilities, according to Trenton Horinek, business development manager, Hologenix LLC. In a presentation, “Fibers of the Future,” at IFAI Advanced Textiles Expo, Horinek first offered a look back at the history of manmade smart …

Into the future

November 7, 2014 | Features

Smart textiles drive developments in many of the applications most desired by the military. The military continues to be one of the markets most interested in adopting smart textile technologies. In fact, military applications represented 21 percent of the smart fabric market in 2013. This year, the…

U.S. Army wish list

November 7, 2014 | Features

The U.S. Army tells the textile industry exactly what it wants in the next generation of protective clothing, gear and structures. Fiber reinforced, insect repellant, modular, ergonomic, chemical resistant, paper thin but super tough, omniphobic. These are some of the properties the U.S. Army’s Na…

Use the right process—and the right terminology

October 27, 2014 | Features

Photo information at end of article. A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but in the textiles business using the “correct” terminology is a must. So says Connie Huffa, president of Fabdesigns, Encino, Calif., an extreme textiles developer for a variety of industries, including sports, …

Implantable drug delivery with extruded fibers

October 27, 2014 | Features

Extruded fibers, loaded with precise dosages of drugs can be made into various implantable drug delivery platforms that can provide healing with more precision and efficacy than other methods now used. This is the premise of Dallas, Texas-based TissueGen Inc., the developer of the absorbable polymer…

What today’s medical textiles can do

October 14, 2014 | Features

IFAI Advanced Textiles Conference medical track covers innovations in textile engineering. The first day of IFAI’s Advanced Textiles Conference Oct. 13-14 covered a range of innovative new technologies and products in the field of medical and biomedical textiles. It may take many years, in some ca…

E-textiles and the future of wearable technology

September 22, 2014 | Features

The Alert Shirt by Wearable Experiments (WE:EX) is a fan jersey that allows the wearer to feel what the players feel live as it happens during a game. Photo: WE:EX. Are you ready for the next generation of wearable technology and the impact it will have on your business? Is it something you’ve e…

Tracking the U.S. textile industry

September 18, 2014 | Features

Performance and technical textiles are at the forefront of the textile industry’s growth spurt, according to textile industry expert David Hinks, who is currently serving as interim dean of the College of Textiles at North Carolina State University. Hinks takes a look at where the textile industry…

Sportswear comes alive

September 8, 2014 | Features

Athletes and their trainers gather biometric data from the growing number of textile products with interactive technology. The seamless integration of “self-centric technology into everyday life” is where opportunity lies, Stéphane Marceau proclaimed in an April article he wrote for VentureBeat…

Smart textile drivers and turning points