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Speaker abstracts
Malcolm Campbell, Retail &
Textile [biography]
WOOL - The Cloth of Kings - from crib to coffin
Since time immemorial, wool fibre from sheep, cashmere goats, camels, alpaca, angora and vicuna has protected mankind, comforted mankind, warmed mankind, dressed mankind, and healed mankind. Man owes much of his survival and current stage of development to wool. No other natural resource has had such a diverse impact on the life of the Human Race.
Kings, War Lords, Emperors and Priests have protected the noble animals that produced the world's wool fibre, hence the name used today, ‘noble fibres’. A fibre once only worn by nobility, too special, too rare for the common people.
There are 1.1 billion sheep in the world. Malcolm will tell you where they come from, what their wool is used for, from carpets, to socks, to suits, to curtains, to lingerie, to knitwear, to bedding, to sport… even tennis balls are made from wool! He will tell you why the properties of wool are so unique, and so complicated to be used in so many different end uses, and, importantly, to be the best fibre for each of these applications. No man-made fibre will ever replace what nature has created. He will debate the history of wool, the geography of wool, the chemistry of wool, as well as new technical innovations to bring wool alive again to a new generation in the 21st Century, a blend of science and nature. He will discuss wool’s past and forecast its future, a future that mankind controls. Wool protected man. Man must now protect wool.
You will be amazed at what you did not know about Mother Nature’s glorious fibre, wool.
Peter Duffield, Global Textiles Associates
[biography]
Achieving Sustainability in the Wool Supply Chain
Designers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers globally are increasingly looking beyond the appearance and performance of textile products, to consider their environmental and ethical credentials. This presentation reviews the standards that wool textiles must meet to satisfy this demand and the processing changes that are required.
Bill Macbeth, Textile Centre of Excellence
[biography]
The Textile Futures Programme, Yorkshire & The Humber Region (UK)
The Programme is being delivered by the Textile Centre of Excellence
in Huddersfield working in partnership with the University of Leeds thanks to the
backing and support of the Regional Development Agency, Yorkshire Forward
and the European Regional Development Fund. This new Programme will
significantly increase the region's capacity to operate in the Advanced
Materials sector and aims to provide practical and financial backing for manufacturers
to work with experts from universities and research organisations to create new
high-value, 'high-tech' products.
New technologies, coupled with increasing environmental concerns are opening up major opportunities for companies that can create lighter, stronger components, and materials that can sense and adjust to their environment. The programme's feasibility studies have demonstrated that strong collaboration between industry and research partners can drive the development of new processes and the creation of new materials that will generate clear competitive advantage for the region’s manufacturers.
David M Lewis, University of Leeds
[biography]
Digital Printing of Woollen Textiles
Printing of wool fabrics has always been a small-lot, high fashion activity; this has meant that wool printing did not sit easily in print mills equipped with high productivity rotary screen printing machines capable of printing speeds of 50 metres per minute. However even in the cotton fabric printing industry runs of 500 metres are now common and likely to become even smaller. Other drawbacks of rotary screen printing methods include low machine utilisation efficiency or downtime; a pattern set-up can take one hour and screen washing and drying processes can take one to two hours. Also of concern is the time delay from print design to screen commissioning and screen delivery; this can be three or four weeks.
Given the demands for individual designs it could be that the age of mass production printing to a particular colour-way and design is coming to an end; the only way to meet this challenge is to develop digital printing processes for textiles. Successful development of these digital systems will especially advantage wool and wool-blend fabric printers with their traditional small-run production. Digital printing greatly reduces costs which would have been associated with screen production and screen storage, allows designers to make pattern and colour changes immediately and eliminates print registration problems.
Before digital printing can commence commercially on wool fabric the following must be considered: the availability of suitable machinery; the formulation of fabric pre-treatment agents; the development of ink formulations designed to give maximum colour yield; the minimisation of background yellowing of the printed fabrics; finally the prints should exhibit excellent wet-fastness and light-fastness properties. Ink-jet printing allows very small, customized runs to be printed, but if fixation is accomplished by steaming then the need for expensive equipment can be a problem; for small operations, such as expected in wool fabric printing, it would thus be desirable to develop the prints by simply batching them at room temperature, followed by a simple wash-off.
Full details as to how to accomplish these very desirable outcomes will be given in the presentation.