TEXTILES.ORG
Taking on the wearables challenges
November 13th, 2023
AFFOA showed a newly developed material for smart products in their booth on the show floor at Advanced Textiles Expo in Orlando. It describes the material as a “flexible, roll-to-roll, inkjet manufacturable, RF metamaterial for wearables.” Photo: Janet Preus. The Emerging Technologies Conference, part of the Advanced Textiles Association’s annual Expo, revealed the diversity in […]
Scientists devise a sensing sweater for industrial robots
June 12th, 2023
Photo: Provided by the researchers, Carnegie Mellon University. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have designed a smart sweater for a robot that can immediately stop moving if it accidentally makes contact with an adjacent human worker. To keep from accidentally hurting their human coworkers, many industrial robots have sensors that detect physical contact with people or other […]
Smart Fabrics Summit calls for proposals
November 28th, 2022
The 2023 Smart Fabrics Summit is set to take place April 11–12, 2023, at North Carolina State University (NC State), Raleigh, N.C. The two-day event, sponsored by the Advanced Textiles Association and the Wilson College of Textiles, NC State, will feature educational sessions, product showcases, tours of the college’s facilities, and networking opportunities. Industry participants […]
Commercialization progress
November 14th, 2022
Detail of Stratasys collaboration with designers threeASFOUR and Travis Fitch for their Chro-Morpho Collection (2019). The optical effect of the print is lenticular, mimicking the Morpho butterfly in the changing of color triggered by movement and shifting light. Photo: Marie O’Mahony. At the Advanced Textiles Conference in October in Charlotte, N.C., Anil Kircalianli, head of […]
Tomorrow’s textiles
September 12th, 2022
An example use of the fiber-based microelectronics integrated into a New Balance running shoe for safety applications and unique data transmission. Photo: AFFOA Historical branding of textiles has led the general population to think that textiles are anything but advanced. As anyone in the textile industry can appreciate, textiles are not simple or basic, but […]
What to know about e-textile standards
August 22nd, 2022
By incorporating a type of plastic yarn and using heat to slightly melt it (thermoforming), MIT researchers were able to greatly improve the precision of pressure sensors woven into multilayered knit textiles, which they call 3DKnITS. Photo: Irmandy Wicaksono/ MIT As the e-textiles industry continues to grow, it will be essential that there are consensus-based […]
Major support for smart textile R&D announced
June 27th, 2022
Supercapacitor yarns integrated in a fabric for powering LEDs. North Carolina State University researchers have found a way to prevent electrical malfunctions in yarns designed to store electrical energy. Photo: Nanfei He. Government contracts, historically, have been a major source of funding for research and development in the advanced textiles world. An example of this […]
IARPA launches SMART ePANTS program
May 23rd, 2022
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) recently held a Proposers’ Day in Arlington, Va., and virtually. Its purpose was to introduce the SMART ePANTS program to potential proposers and to provide information on technical requirements and program objectives. The program is being instigated to develop sensor systems that can record and store audio, video and […]
Progress through collaboration
April 25th, 2022
Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) presented and exhibited at the Smart Fabrics Summit, showing AFFOA advanced functional fiber preforms and advanced fibers demonstrating semiconductor devices (LED chips) embedded into fibers. The Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) continues to be in the forefront of new developments in technologies for advanced textile systems. Michelle Farrington, […]
Workforce, supply chain and manufacturing
April 11th, 2022
Printed antenna designs are optimized for improving efficiency of communication close to the body. The NEXT Research Lab at NC State works with researchers from Penn State University in the design of these antennas to support wearable electronics. This year’s Smart Fabrics Summit zeroed in on the industry’s most important issues, building a new in-person […]