Enabling platform technology for smart fabric design and printing

Abstract

A hardware and software platform is presented enabling the design, and realisation via printing, of smart fabrics. The cultural and creative industries are an important economic area within which designers frequently utilise fabrics. Smart fabrics offer further creative opportunities to the cultural and creative industries, but designers often lack the required specialist knowledge, in electronics, software and materials, to produce smart fabrics. The software platform offers the ability to perform design, layout and visualisation of a smart fabric using a library of standard smart fabric functions (e.g. electroluminescence) so specialist expertise is not needed. Operation of the smart fabric can be simulated, and parameters can be set for smart fabric control electronics, which consists of standard circuit board modules. The software also provides driver code for the hardware platform to print the smart fabric. The hardware platform consists of a bespoke dispenser printer; functional inks are deposited via a pneumatic syringe controlled by the driver software, allowing bespoke rapid prototyped smart fabrics to be printed. Operation of the software and hardware system is demonstrated by the realisation of an interactive smart fabric consisting of electroluminescent lamps controlled by a proximity sensor. The modular electronics are used to control the smart fabric operation using embedded code generated by the software platform. For example, the blink rate of the electroluminescent lamp can be adjusted by the proximity of a hand. This control is achieved by the use of intuitive drop-down menus and input/output selections by the creative user. At present, the platform allows the design, print and implementation of smart fabrics incorporating the functions of colour change, electroluminescence, sound emission and proximity sensing. The platform can be expanded to add additional functions in the future and the printer will be compatible with new inks developed for screen and inkjet printing.

Fully Screen-Printed PI/PEG Blends Enabled Patternable Electrodes for Scalable Manufacturing of Skin-Conformal, Stretchable, Wearable Electronics

“…For better breathability and stretchability, a nonwoven electrospun polyurethane textile was introduced. 9 However, textile-based substrates still have the following limitations: (1) they have anisotropic mechanical and electrical properties due to their woven structure, 21 (2) the rough texture of textiles could prohibit the fine printing detail, 22,23 and (3) textile substrates are not patternable and they require additional processes such as flipping and puncturing processes for electrode connection. 9 Elastomers such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and Ecoflex are also used for fabricating flexible and stretchable substrates.…”

Modern Developments for Textile-Based Supercapacitors

“…Printed batteries allow for thin, flexible devices that can easily be fabricated onto a textile . Printing methods for both alkaline and lithium batteries include inkjet printing, , dispenser printing, , and screen printing. , Alternative methods of fabricating textile-based batteries include spinning the battery and encapsulating it in the electrolyte material or coating a textile with an electrolyte and sandwiching that between the cathode and anode material . Lithium-ion batteries have also been fabricated into liquid-activated batteries that are useful for textiles such as life jackets .…”

Kinetic Fabric Samples as a New Approach to Interactive Fashion Arts

“…Another research project --one that produced smart textiles --involved both hardware and software that enabled designers to work with a printer that deposited electronic functional inks onto fabrics (Torah et al, 2019). This printer allows the designers to print out the rapid prototype smart fabrics and incorporated the functions of colour change, electroluminescence (see Figure 2), sound emission and proximity sensing.…”

“…Printed demonstrator showing two electroluminescent lamps and one proximity sensor with associated connector at the edge of the fabric(Torah et al, 2019).…”