The crucially important Production Methods class many of us took as ID students could only cram three or four dozen processes into a semester (and as you can see here, we’ve tried to post about as many of those processes as possible for those of you without ID educational backgrounds); so it’s no wonder that most of them were confined to metal- or plastic-working processes. But ID encompasses soft materials like fabrics as well, so we’re always on the lookout for those gaps in our curriculum. Reader Kat sent us a link to this video revealing the manufacture of a material most of us wear, the denim that goes into jeans:
The video is beautiful to watch, but a little frustrating in that there’s no explanatory narrative illuminating the specific steps. Thankfully Cool Hunting’s Josh Rubin has provided some explanation so we can sort of tell what the heck is going on:
Man this is cool. To make a cell phone so durable no protective case is required, HTC has started messing with some esoteric production methods. “Micro arc oxidation” is an eletrochemical process whereby a piece of aluminum is zapped with 10,000 volts, transforming the surface into a ceramic-like surface. Boring to read about, but wicked to watch:
A new pre-fabricated dwelling addresses financial, aesthetic and ecological concerns
The C6, a new low-cost abode by LivingHomes unveiled today at the TED conference in both Long Beach and Palm Springs, California, makes a substantial leap forward in green building. Designed with the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans in mind, the pre-fabricated structure fulfills the requirements for the LEED platinum-level environmental program with a $179,000 price point and two-day installation timetable.
Non-profit organization Make It Right—the brainchild of Brad Pitt and architect William McDonough—collaborated with LivingHomes on the creation of the C6, producing an eco-friendly home that also complied with economic and spacial restraints. For the materials, LivingHome turned to McDonough’s book “Cradle to Cradle“, which condemns industrial manufacturing’s wasteful methods and encourages the use of recyclable and non-toxic materials. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of each C6 home will be donated to Make It Right.
Beyond its stellar environmental concern, the C6 ranks as an enviable design object. Focused on natural light, the floor-to-ceiling windows extend around the courtyard-style, three-bedroom house, while transom windows and solar tubes bring light to interior spaces like closets and bathrooms. The wooden interior and cork flooring give the space a warm feel, and the external fiber cement cladding makes an affordable, durable material for prolonged use.
Tech features inside the C6 include the Nest learning thermostat and the iPhone-controlled Verve lighting system. The house can be purchased at its basic level or upgraded with a number of features for extra cost. From there, general contractors must be reached to lay the foundation and erect the structure. Long thought to be the provenance of wealthy homeowners, green design has finally entered the affordable housing market with the C6.
Visit the LivingHomes website for C6 purchase and building information, or to design your own custom virtual C6 floorplan.
Nike’s continued materials experimentation has yielded Flyknit, their proprietary blend of “yarns and fabric variations [that] are precisely engineered only where they are needed for a featherweight, formfitting and virtually seamless upper.” The benefits of employing materials in this way are 1) a lighter weight product, and 2) less waste, as the Flyknit materials comprise the bulk of the upper, and 3) combining the comfort of a sock with the structure and support of a traditional hard-material sneaker.
This is a good week for materials geeks. Readers have written in about two more composite materials, one that fits into the family populated by the Tegris and Pure materials, and one that doesn’t. Here’s an opportunity to explain the distinction.
The former material is called Curv and produced by Propex Fabrics. Like Tegris and Pure, it’s a 100% polypropylene composite, and like Tegris it’s used in luggage (this time by Samsonite rather than Tumi). The latter material is Twintex, which has similar stiffness and impact-resistance to the others being discussed here, but which differs in that it’s made from polypropylene combined with glass.
While all of the materials here can be referred to as “composites,” that word can be misleading, and we ought to explain how its meaning changes when preceded by the word “monomaterial.” Twintex is a composite of the two different materials of glass and polypropylene, which is easy enough to understand. But Tegris, Pure and Curv are monomaterial—”made of one thing”—and composites of, essentially, different forms of that same material. When polypropylene is drawn into filaments, and that filament is made into a sort of “yarn” or tape, and that tape is woven into a sheet, and that sheet is then fused together with more sheets like it, you can see that we have a very sophisticated manufacturing process where strength is added at each step without introducing any new materials. They are, essentially, self-reinforcing.
We’ve also heard that while Tegris may be new to Tumi and many of us, it’s not new to boat manufacturers and NASCAR. Function Engineering’s Lori Hobson, formerly of product development consultancy MindTribe, has been tracking Tegris since at least 2008. In a materials write-up from that year, she provides crucial statistics that explain how the material stacks up against carbon fiber: While monomaterial Tegris is only 70% as strong, it rings in at just 10% of the cost. “Carbon fiber might be fine for Formula 1 budgets, but what about racing’s poorer cousins?” Hobson writes, explaining why NASCAR found Tegris attractive.
Hobson also explains that Tegris doesn’t splinter into sharp, unfriendly-to-tires pieces that would litter tracks after impacts. We dug up this cool YouTube video showing what appears to be a javelin being fired at a sheet of Tegris at 100 miles per hour:
Following our post on the Tegris material, reader Niels has asked if a material trademarked as Pure, produced by Dutch textiles manufacturer The Royal Lankhorst Euronete Group and pictured here, is essentially the same stuff with different trademarking.
There’s an exciting new material on the block, and it’s showing up in…luggage. Baggage manufacturer Tumi is now using Tegris, a polypropylene thermoplastic composite developed by textile and chemical giant Milliken, and is rolling it out in their new Tegra-Lite collection, starting with a carry-on.
So what is Tegris, and why is it better than, say, the polycarbonate used in Pelican cases? Here are the talking points we think will be of interest to product designers:
One year ago Corning, the upstate-New-York-based glass manufacturer, released a concept video called “A Day of Glass.” The five-and-a-half-minute spot featured Microsoft-like depictions of a family living in a world where interface designers appear to have solved more problems than we knew we had, and the vision resounded with viewers (to the tune of 17.5 million YouTube hits and counting).
Now Corning’s at it again with “A Day of Glass 2,” below. Released almost exactly one year after the first vid, it continues to depict Corning’s vision of “how highly engineered glass, with companion technologies, will help shape our world.” Be sure to check out the medical stuff that starts happening around 4:03–how could would it be if you could do that with cross-sections of particularly troublesome parts of your product design?
While the cynics among us can’t help but project the infrastructure and behind-the-scenes design required to make all of this stuff work–“Ah, I guess there’s a server in the closet,” “So that little rectangle is cloud-enabled,” et cetera–it seems even tighter than the Microsoft vids.
Corning has also released a sort of “For Dummies” version of the vid where an on-screen narrator cuts in to explain the fanciful technologies that the characters are interacting with. Hit the jump to check it out.
Design diversification: BMW DesignworksUSA, Porsche Design and Mercedes have all expanded their initially auto-based design talents into other sectors, and now Nissan is taking steps in this direction. The number two Japanese automaker has developed a self-healing material for their 370Z, Murano and X-Trail vehicles that they feel would lend itself well to a certain popular consumer product.
Nissan’s Scratch Shield iPhone Case is made from a proprietary blend of ABS plastic and polyrotaxane paint that heals itself, depending on the severity of the scratch, in hours or days:
The Nissan Scratch Shield iPhone case has been designed using several automotive engineering innovations to deliver a more durable and long-lasting paint coat, and closely fitting, tight case. The case has three key benefits: the highly flexible and elastic properties of Scratch Shield paint technology allows fine scratches to quickly mend themselves*; its tactile gel-like rather than glossy surface is more scratch-resistant than conventional paint and provides a better grip; and the case itself is made of ABS plastic – a high grade substance widely used in the automotive industry which is more rigid and robust than other plastics. The outer ‘paint’ is made from polyrotaxane, which means that when damage occurs to the coating in the form of a fine scratch, the chemical structure is able to react to change back to its original shape and fill the gap – ‘healing’ the blemish.
*Scratch Shield can heal small scratches in as little as an hour, but more severe cases can take up to a week’s time to heal.
If beta-testing of the currently-being-prototyped case works out well, Nissan expects to begin selling the product later this year.
This video could’ve done with some sound (and less distracting editing), but it provides an interesting look at how a carbon-fiber bicycle comes together. France’s Time Bicycles uses a manufacturing process called Resin Transfer Molding, which involves drawing the resin into the fibers at the mold, and claims to be “the only cycling designer that has perfectly mastered this fabrication process.” The way the video is shot admittedly renders parts of the production quite dull, but at least check out the trippy machines in the beginning that weave the carbon strands together:
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