Ever wondered which jacket to buy for the winter? Here's an interesting article that may help.

http://gearpatrol.com/2016/01/28/waterproof-breathable-jacket-technology-explained/

C.P Aluart supply knitted fabrics and garments for workwear and PPE. 

This highly respected technical textiles supplier from Spain has worked closely with all the emergency services in Europe for several years supplying FR, anti-cut, high visibility fabrics and garments.

They also produce workwear and PPE fabrics designed to give optimum comfort and protection to the wearer.

Compression Workwear - 

Believe it or not athletes don't wear tight clothing just to make themselves look good. No, the main reason is to improve muscle performance and recovery by increasing blood flow around the important muscles. This helps to reduce fatigue and reduce injury.

This technology is now moving into other areas such as workwear and PPE equipment to help in the workplace where workers are physically active for long periods.

DVT stockings have been around for a long time and health experts have always advised wearing them on long haul flight. The reason these help to stop deep vein thrombosis, DVT, is due to the pressure applied to the blood vessels below the skin reducing their diameter. This in turn increases the speed the blood passes through the veins stopping clots from forming.

The same theory is used with compression fabrics, they reduce the size of the blood vessels, increase the speed the blood moves through the body but rather than reducing the risk of clotting its purpose is to get re-oxigenated blood pumped back to the mussels that are needing it as quickly as possible.

Although compression workwear isn't being encouraged by many companies there is evidence that these products could improve output and wellbeing within the work area.

University of Technology Sidney has done testing in this area.

Compression Workwear

Cycling Helmets

Anyone who's been reading my linked in posts regarding this subject linkedin.com/cycle helmets will probably guess what this is.

This is some of the latest high impact material from the US that will be integral to the new helmet.

So far I've been doing some very crude testing in the garage with things that could be classed as similar to the human head, melons, and dropping them onto this material from ever increasing heights and the results are good. At 2.2m you can still eat the melon without scraping it off the floor. No cracks, no bruising.

Next stage is to find someone who can do proper velocity testing. If anyone has any contacts in this area I would be very grateful for this introduction.

How do I fill my days?

I was struggling to think of something that might be of interest to all you kind people who read this blog so today I'm going to just elaborate on what my business model or models are so you understand what I do and you can see if there's anything I can do to help you.



Textiles
As you'll know having read my previous blogs I am anything to do with textiles, from polymer through to finished article. I work mainly in the technical textile sectors in the military and sports areas, however I have been known to work in other areas such as food, healthcare, civil engineering, automotive, aerospace. In fact I'll work in any area that wants help.
My services in the textile industry include -

• Consultancy
• Direct sales, yarns and fabrics
• Sourcing and referrals
• Development
• Business Management Techniques
• Lean manufacturing 
• Quality
• Planning
• Purchasing
• Negotiation
• Auditing (internal and external)

But what else do I do to fill my days?

Computers
Something I've always played with ever since I first used an old Amstrad 1520 MSDOS based machine to type my thesis for college, none of this fancy windows 8 stuff, if you wanted to access a program it was c:\bla\bla\bla.exe or something similar and hopefully it would get you there. In
fact before that one of my brothers had the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, do you remember? Plug it in to the tele, spend hours typing in code and then you could play very eliminatory space invaders, great fun...
And so it started and I've progressed through all the different windows releases and several Mac ones.
This side of the business was always meant to be very small and really just to fill time if I need to. However it's steadily growing and most weeks I have two or three jobs on.
I help people understand their system, set it up for them, show them how various programs like Skype and Email work and fix problems where I can.
My services include -

• Lessons (one to one at your home or office) 
• Basic operations - navigation, shortcuts, email, skype, internet
• MS Office including Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access
• Security
• Repairs, backups, health checks.
• Home networks.
• New installation setup.

So, to all those people who keep asking me what I do, that's it.... Oh apart from lots of cycling, swimming, a bit of photography, gardening, and enjoying some fine West Country real ales... Cheers for now.

Eco Textiles (part 2)

In part one we asked the question "How sustainable is Bamboo fibre" and although all the claims are out there we see little or no evidence that the crop is being grown or managed in a sustainable way.

This time I want to look at recycled polyester or rPET as it's know in the trade.

Synthetic fibres are the fibre of choice in textiles with 65% of all fibres used being synthetic against 35% coming from natural sources and of all the synthetic fires approximately 70% is polyester or PET of which 60% of PET goes into textiles with 30% going to bottles.

It's claimed that around 100 million barrels of crude oil is used to make virgin polyester each year, that means around 70 million barrels goes for textiles.

Nearly all recycled polyester comes from the bottle stream; the main reason for this is because the bottle grade is basically not contaminated like textiles. Most textiles will have some finishing chemical or coating on it or could be mixed with other fibres such as cotton or nylon that renders it unfit for recycling.

So why recycle it?

1.    It's claimed that it takes less than half the energy requirement to process 1000kg of rPET than it would to produce the same amount of virgin polyester.

2.    It stops it going to landfill where it would take thousands of years to decompose

And how much ends up in recycling? 

We all put our boxes out each week with a mixture of tins, glass, plastics and paper however America, one of the largest users or plastic bottles, only recycles around 6% of all their plastic, the remainder goes to landfill and this is in a country where the population is relatively well educated and its easy to recycle. If that could be moved to 15 or 20% think of all the barrels of oil that would save?

The down sides of recycling.

1.    The problem with making rPET is this:  recycling, as most people think of it, is a myth.  Most people believe that plastics can be infinitely recycled  – creating new from old. The cold hard fact is that there is no such thing as recycling plastic, because it is not a closed loop.  None of the food standard bottles that are collected from you are used to make new food standard bottles, because each time the plastic is heated it degenerates, so subsequently the polymer is degraded and can’t meet food quality standards for these bottles.  The plastic must be used to make lower quality products.

2.    Using recycled polyester for fibers also creates some problems specific to the textile industry:


The base color of the recycled polyester chips vary from white to creamy yellow so dyers are using chlorine-based bleaches to whiten the fabric.


Inconsistency of dye uptake makes it difficult to get good batch-to-batch color consistency.

3.    And as mentioned earlier, most fabrics have a coating, chemical finish or are blended with other fibres that make recycling the polyester unachievable.

4.    And there is another consideration in recycling polyester: antimony, which is present in most virgin polyester, is converted to antimony trioxide at high temperatures, which as are necessary during recycling, releasing this carcinogen from the polymer into the atmosphere.

So;

1.    Is Polyester recycled? Technically no because it isn’t being recycled, it’s being changed and made into something else.

2.    Is it helping to resolve landfill issues? Most definitely yes. Polyester takes thousands of years to degrade and even then will leave residues that could be harmful.

3.    Is it cutting pollution? Yes, in both oil usage and CO2 emissions using half of that used or created by the manufacture of virgin PET.

Eco Textiles

Organic cotton reduces harmful pesticides and fertilisers, Bamboo fibre grows faster and with less water and Recycling PET means you can make t-shirts out of plastic bottles. Eco textiles are out there, they’re affordable and much healthier for our planet.

Or are they?

A lot of statements have been made in this field over the years but when you break it down and look behind the hype and advertising how friendly are these so called eco friendly fibres?
Over the next few weeks I will be looking at various different so called eco friendly fibres.

Lets start with the old favorite, Bamboo. 
Soft as silk, fast-growing, needs little water, pesticides or fertilisers, Bamboo textiles have lots of potential as a eco-friendly textile. Bamboo clothing  is claimed to be breathable, naturally anti-bacterial and hypoallergenic. It’s one of earth’s most sustainable resources. However as with every cash crop, producers are looking at ways to maximise output and reduce waste. This means using water, pesticides and fertilisers. It means cutting down natural forest to enable more hectares to be planted.

The  cellulose, used to make the fibre, is extracted from the bamboo and then mixed with a cocktail of carbon disulphide, sodium hydroxide and sulphuric acid to convert the plant pulp into textile quality fibre. This process can be very polluting and harmful to people working with it unless it is carefully controlled in a closed loop system.

There are organic options but because of the the total lack of transparency in the bamboo fibre industry most large companies who are looking for the eco-friendly answer are staying away from bamboo products and sticking with Tencel that is also made from cellulose but with non-toxic chemicals in a closed loop system from certified eucalyptus tree farms.

All this said people are working very hard to sort the above problems so one day we will be able to buy a shirt made from this great fibre with the confidence that we are doing our bit for the environment...

Next time we'll look at recycled polyester fibres...