diminished conductivity of conductive fabric

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Permalink Reply by Syuzi on January 20, 2010 at 10:47am

Have you tried using fusible fabric interfacing? Here's a tutorial.

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Permalink Reply by Danielle Roberts on January 21, 2010 at 1:54am

Thanks very much Syuzi, that looks like an interesting technique. I have a few questions though:
- what exactly is this fabric? Where can you get it?
- How does it stick the conductive fabric onto the orange fabric. In the slide show I can only see that the fabric interfacing is on top of the conductive fabric. But may be I missed something?

Thanks very much in advance.

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Permalink Reply by Syuzi on January 21, 2010 at 9:43am

I believe you can use a double or single-sided fusible interfacing to attach the conductive fabric to the ordinary fabric. The interfacing has little beads of glue that melt when you pass an iron over them. I don't think the temperature of the iron needs to be too high so you don't adversely effect the conductive fabric.

If you don't want to use any heat at all, why not simply sew the two pieces together?

Lastly, if you are attempting to make a thermochromatic display, you don't need highly conductive fabric at all. Try to use a resistive fabric instead of a conductive fabric. Resistive fabrics are typically used in heating applications. They generate heat by running a current through it.

Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Danielle Roberts on January 22, 2010 at 2:46am

Thanks so very much for your response! That's very useful.
As for sewing, I wanted the seams not to show through on the side of the ink. I also reckoned that glue would make a better connection, but I must confess I didn't test this. The glue foils also proved very unreliable...

You are right in stating that highly conductive fabric may be isn't the best material to use for generating heat. I had to do a lot of tests befor I had the right width of the strips to make them resistive enough. You can take a look at the blog I keep on this project: http://www.numuseum.nl/body-warner/
The resistive fabric sounds very promissing, but is it easy to get? I have done a search but so far found nothing.

Thanks again and have a nice weekend.

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Permalink Reply by Syuzi on January 24, 2010 at 9:53pm

I've aware of your project. I've been lurking on your site watching it develop. ;-)

Resistive fabrics are a bit difficult to get hold of... you can try contacting Eeoynx and asking for their fabric samples. It'll give you an 8.5" x 11" sample to work with.

Another option to consider is using nichrome wire. It's essentially a resistive wire that you can hand sew onto a textile.

My last suggestion would be to create your own resistive textile by felting. You can try using some of this copper metal fiber and felt it onto another wool fabric. That way you can control the resistivity of your fabric.

I've made pressures sensors of varying sensitivity this way... this is probably a good idea for a tutorial. If time permits, I will try to write something up within the next few weeks.

Hope this helps!

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Permalink Reply by Danielle Roberts on January 25, 2010 at 1:17am

Hi Syuzi,
Thanks again for all your great tips. That's very interesting. I'd already heard about Eeoynx, I hadn't figured out that you could get samples there, though.

Really nice to hear that you're already following my project! I've got a pretty heavy deadline and don't have the time to experiment now. I've actually found out that the strips need more initial power to heat them up completely. So there isn't anything wrong with the strips of conductive fabric.
But I suppose using resistive materials will be more power effecient. (I'm using 4 D-cell batteries now) I'll do some experimenting with the materials you adviced after the deadline :) And maybe I can improve on the displays.

Making my own material also sounds very exiting. I'm already looking forward to your tutorial.

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