TEXTILES.ORG
By their nature, composite products are tough to separate and recycle, and e-textiles take that to another level. So researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder’s ATLAS Institute developed a desktop machine to enable materials designers to spin biofibers for smart textile prototypes. Biofibers can be dissolved and respun and the product’s sensor components reclaimed, enabling a faster product development process with less waste in the near term—and possibly recyclable smart fabrics in the future.
The team explored gelatin fibers, created with powdered gelatin purchased from a butcher shop. They feel a bit like flax and dissolve in minutes to an hour. Genipin, derived from a fruit, strengthened the fibers. Gelatin wasn’t seen as a base for a final consumer-facing product but as an illustrative example of the potential of biofibers in e-textiles.
The open-source dry-jet wet-spinning machine cost about $560 to build. “You could customize fibers with the strength and elasticity you want, the color you want,” says Eldy Lázaro Vásquez, a doctoral student in the ATLAS Institute and the team’s lead. “With this kind of prototyping machine, anyone can make fibers. You don’t need the big machines that are only in university chemistry departments.”
Although the gelatin fibers were useful in handwoven prototypes, solutions that produce stronger biofibers, such as of chitin from crustaceans or agar-agar from algae, could open up knitting and crocheting means of prototyping materials. “Each polymer is its own world,” the study notes.
The researchers presented their findings in May at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Honolulu, Hawaii.