e-textile swatch – Skin patch with magnet zipper

As member of the E-textile group I was asked to contribute to a e-textile swatch book 2013. As by-wire.net is developing products worn close to the body I tried to address some discussion topics that often occur during the process. Four of them are combined in this e-textile swatch.

1) Skin tactility: three ‘feels’ can be experienced composed out of 1 kind of material through lamination.

2) Measuring resistance: when 2 of these conductive components are placed on for example the body, and connected as + and – component changes in resistance can be measured.

3) Handling of the products: items on the body need to be opened and closed quite often. Here a magnet zipper solution for this.

4) System construction: I tried to bring some materials, functionalities and concepts together in clean and somewhat aesthetically pleasing swatch by using the laser cutter and hot-melt lamination.

All these aspects are learning’s and ongoing developments in several projects.

Making process
1) Prepare fabrics with vliesofix + iron
2) Laser-cut all the parts
3) Glue via hotmelt the parts together, while using a template for the 3d shaped botton
4) Glue the magnets (as they can’t handle the needed heat of the hotmelt) with textile adhesive