Fascinating Fabric Innovations

Posted: 01/05/2012 15:58 Updated: 10/05/2012 15:44

From knits made from milk protein and glowing handbags made from fibre-optic weaving to clothes that self-clean in sunlight and deliver medication straight to your skin, we've rounded up some of the most intriguing technological developments in textiles:

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From knits made from milk protein and glowing handbags made from fibre-optic weaving to clothes that self-clean in sunlight and deliver medication straight to your skin, we've rounded up some of the m...
From knits made from milk protein and glowing handbags made from fibre-optic weaving to clothes that self-clean in sunlight and deliver medication straight to your skin, we've rounded up some of the m...
Filed by Philippa Warr  | 
 
 
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11:23 PM on 06/04/2012
it might clean , but what about the smell of the fabric,,, or the smell of 100 baths, or showers , when the fabric is used?????????????????
09:21 PM on 06/04/2012
Not this item again, surely.
We had it just a short time ago, news must be running at an all time low.
07:04 AM on 05/24/2012
There has been advances in fabric technology for years,
For over a decade now, there has been a fabric where the garment changes colour with body heat from the wearer. Impressive in discos!!
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03:20 PM on 05/17/2012
It's amazing what inovations there are in the world of textiles. Arn't even some of the bodies on some of the F1 cars currently made of some kind of textiles?
06:01 PM on 05/17/2012
They have been for decades: "fibreglass" as a structural material is a textile reinforced resin - and plenty of other textile fibres -e.g. hemp - also do the job, and can be completely burnt later for disposal - as can carbon fibres which have been similarly making aircraft wings (considerably more demanding than F1 bodies!) for some decades now, even though they proved inadequate for turbine blades in the engines when that was attempted in the '60s.
08:19 AM on 05/17/2012
Knitted spun milk-protein is very old hat - Courtaulds (remember them?) produced it in the '50s (though it was not then claimed to be a skin treatment).

So are oxidatively self-cleaning clothes, - the Romans were aware of them - for them, asbestos which you cleaned by heating it. And this problem is still there, except for asbestos, mineral-wool and glass-fibre (all distinctly uncomfortable if not actually dangerous), the various high energy species that can form from oxygen and water, under appropriate (photo)catalysis, will attack the fibres, giving your clothes a very short, if clean, life. Some 45 years since I bought an anorak, which had been dyed with a safety-orange dye which evidently produced an excited oxygen species under influence of light, within little more than a year the anorak had all the tear-resistance of a paper-handkerchief.
07:19 AM on 05/17/2012
If we needed the sun to clean our clothes, there'd have been an awful lot of very smelly people in the UK over the last couple of months.
10:58 PM on 05/16/2012
Also see 'The Man in the White Suit (1951)'
10:02 PM on 05/16/2012
i bet posh spice will try it lol
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astralady
09:41 PM on 05/16/2012
what a load of old rubbish. where on earth did they get this brainwave idea.i`ve heard it all now lol lol
07:35 PM on 05/16/2012
Not in the UK obviously.
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gumpo
05:38 PM on 05/16/2012
Fabric that can clean itself in the sun ? What utter horsesh*t.
If you wiped dog sh*te on a piece of fabric you could leave it in the sun for as long as you like but it will still stink of dog sh*te at the end of the day, and the next morning !!
09:34 PM on 05/16/2012
On my! Which smells best? Dog or human faeces? As Harry Hill would say " FIGHTTTTT"
12:48 AM on 05/17/2012
gump: nano-weave, graphene technology, is just a few years away. Self-cleaning/temperature stabilised clothing will become a major breakthrough for future space travel, and much else besides. So make the most of your dog-dirt daubing, your days are numbered.
cantabria
my default position is wrong
06:36 AM on 05/17/2012
The major detergent manufacturers will not let this happen. Just like the everlasting lightbulb invented years ago and the everlasting battery invented in Sweden a few years ago. The major manufacturers buy the patents and put them into storage, the poor inventor is usually skint and therefore takes the money.