AMBRO Labs

AMBRO Labs

Archives for January 2016

Screen Printing Electroluminescent Lights On Garments

By 6 Comments

Screen Printing Electroluminescent Lights On Garments

Today AMBRO Labs successfully screen printed an electroluminescent light on a t-shirt.  Over the last several months we’ve been experimenting with various techniques to print EL on fabric without success. Screen printing electroluminescent lights on garments will offer Makers and DIY enthusiasts a flexible and washable solution for their light up wearable projects. This methodology also enables retail and production pieces the flexibility of offering illumination on fabric without the need for hard and inflexible circuitry.

As you have seen from some of our other experiments, we’ve sewn EL tape and EL panels directly onto fabric. We’ve also sewn traditional LEDs to fabric. Even thought wearable LED’s, known as Neopixels, are readily available and offer a great option to add light to your garments.  We wanted to be able to fully integrate a light source directly into the fibers of a fabric that offers illumination and flexibility.

We’ve screen printed our first successful prototype today.  This proof of concept shows that our EL screen printing technology works for fabric and garments.  Our next steps will be to integrate the EL screen printed fabric with sewable electronics including conductive thread and popular wearable platforms.

While screen printing electroluminescent lights on garments is a good first step, we would like to provide this capability to the DIY and Maker community via the use of transfer / iron on technology.  Further experimentation will be necessary in order to achieve this goal.

We see a portable version of our screen printing EL technology where makers can use a standard house hold iron to apply a flexible EL panel to their wearable projects.

Screen Printing Electroluminescent Lights On Garments

Screen Printing Electroluminescent Lights On Garments

No sew conductive thread project

By Leave a Comment

No sew conductive thread project

Not every wearable project has to include sewing. With the right materials you can easily create a no sew conductive thread project without ever having to pick up a needle or sit behind a sewing machine. We sew every day but we know that not everyone is comfortable behind a needle.  There are several ways to move electricity across a garment to a component or a wearable platform without having to sew conductive thread through the garment.

Today I’m going to focus on a method that we’ve used in an experiment on a T-shirt to light up LED’s.

As a screen printing and embroidery company we regularly use a CAD cut heat apply vinyl designed to adhere permanently to garments.  The typical use of this material is to CAD cut sports player names or numbers and adhere them to their uniforms.  This material is available in multiple widths and colors.  In this experiment we’ve used this material to hide conductive thread.

The methodology we used is to lay the thread down on the surface area of the shirt, creating a path to where you want the power or signal to go and then heat seal it in place.  Think of it like taping the wires down, but permanently and in a way that you can’t readily see them. Using this method it’s easy to create a no sew conductive thread project in just a few hours.

In the included video you will see that we’ve used a white vinyl material on the front of the shirt and inside, for the purposes of showing you the methodology, we’ve used orange.  In a workable product, we would do our best to match the color of the vinyl to the color of the garment.

As you will see from the finished product, we have created a retail ready piece, without putting a single needle in the garment.  Of course for the purposes of the experiment, the inside of the garment is very “Frankenstein” but in a production piece, the design would be simplified and clean.  As with most of our experiments, we are showing proof of concept vs. a finished production quality piece.  Any proof of concept can be simplified and cleaned up for a retail ready garment.

Sewing with conductive thread

By Leave a Comment

Sewing with conductive thread

One of the things that has been challenging when experimenting with wearables is sewing with conductive thread. Most of the sewing we do here is with standard thread, and all of the conductive threads that we’ve tested behave much differently than standard threads.  Sewing with conductive thread on industrial sewing machines is tough because of the inflexibility of conductive threads compared to traditional threads.

We’ve noticed that a good amount of sewing with conductive thread that is done online is done by hand vs a sewing machine. The examples that have used a sewing machine have involved the use of a home sewing machine.  Since industrial machines sew 10-20 times faster and have different hooking mechanisms and needles, sewing with conductive thread is much more difficult.

We will be using some conductive threads in our experiments but will experiment with other methods of moving electricity to where we need it on the garments. We believe that while conductive threads are going to be an important part of future wearable technology, that conductive fabrics and inks are going to become the standard method used for the transfer of both electricity and eventually data.

There are many conductive threads and conductive yarns available, each having unique properties and usage.  There isn’t one right product for every project, so any new wearable project will require experimentation and testing.

Electroluminescent Dog Collar

By Leave a Comment

Electroluminescent Dog Collar

EL Tape has become a popular and inexpensive way to add lighting to any DIY project, even sewing projects.  Since EL Tape, like EL Panels, can be punctured, cut and sewn and still work, it’s a great medium to work with for a sewing experiment.  With our dog collar experiment, we set out to make an inexpensive Electroluminescent Dog Collar using a store bought collar, EL Tape and a sewing machine.

We see EL applications as a big component in the next generation of safety gear.  Today, EMS workers, fire and police are all wearing reflective gear that is manufactured with reflective taping. Reflective taping is a great medium to use for safety gear but it requires a separate light source to be effective.  On it’s own, reflective taping does not provide any visibility.  Moonlight, head lights a flash light or other external source of lighting, even the moon, is needed for reflective taping to be an effective source of protection. EL tape illuminates under it’s own power source, and is a great alternative for safety gear. With it’s great principals of being able to adhere to almost anything and light up under it’s own power, it’s a great option to keep emergency workers safe at night, we believe it could do the same for dogs.

If you are a dog owner and are use to walking your dog at night, you’ve likely thought of the danger of passing cars and the low visibility of your dog near the ground.  Reflective collars and carrying a flashlight can help keep your dog safe.  While reflective dog collars and flashlights are a great start to protecting your pooch, an Electroluminescent Dog Collar that can flash or stay lit is a great alternative.

In this experiment we took a standard dog collar and sewed a piece of EL tape to it, then using zip ties we attached a small inverter to provide a portable energy source to light the EL tape.  The result was an inexpensive Electroluminescent Dog Collar that can be made in under an hour.

Applique with EL Panels

By Leave a Comment

Applique with EL Panels

One of our first experiments with with wearable technology was using a traditional garment decorating method called applique. Appliqué is a process where fabric is cut in a specific design and sewed onto a garment. You would typically see this type of decoration on a fraternity or sorority letter sweatshirt.  For garments of that type, two pieces of twill are cut for two different colors and then each sewn on separately.  In this experiment we’ve used Applique with EL Panels to create a unique effect on the front of a sweat shirt.

Applique with EL Panels

Applique with EL Panels

In the example letter “E” shown to the right, there are two pieces of fabric being used to create the letter effect.  The bottom piece of fabric is a white twill, the top piece of fabric is a patterned blue twill.

The patterns, in this case the letter E is typically laser cut, although it’s possible to cut by hand, and then sewn down in layers.

We decided to experiment with a EL Panel a piece of applique and a sweatshirt.  Using the same methodology used for traditional applique decoration, we cut out a smile face from yellow twill, laser cut the eyes and mouth and then sewed an EL panel below the applique.  In this case, the applique hid most of the EL panel and where we wanted the EL to show through we cut holes.

EL panels can be cut and punctured without concern that they will stop working.  You just need to be careful to not cut the electric leads that power the EL. In our experiment, we didn’t cut the panel, we simply punctured it with our sewing machines to hold it below the applique.

The experiment was a success, but the EL panel was too bright and you can see the panel shining thought the applique itself.  Meaning, you can see a square of light below the applique vs. just being able to see the eyes and mouth.  So while a success in concept, future experiments using this method would require careful cutting of the EL panel to eliminate the show through and/or using a thicker twill to block the light that we don’t want seen.

Applique with EL Panels is something that you can experiment with at home using any standard EL panel.  The ones that we used for this project were ridged panels.  Since applique itself is a stiff material, using Applique with EL Panels on any wearable project beneath applique should not result in an uncomfortable garment.

AMBRO Labs Launched

By Leave a Comment

AMBRO Labs Launched

AMBRO Manufacturing, a screen printing and embroidery company located in Flemington, NJ announced today the launch of a new division of their company, named AMBRO Labs.  AMBRO Manufacturing provides contract screen printing, dye sublimation printing and embroidery service to a wide range of schools, organizations and companies.  With over 25 years of experience in the garment decorating and embellishment industry, AMBRO Manufacturing offers the highest quality textile printing and embroidery to our customers.

As Makers and avid fans of the DIY and maker movement, the launch of AMBRO Labs signifies a first step forward towards research and development of wearable technologies, with a specific focus on smart textiles. It also marks our commitment to the future of wearables and smart cloths and fabrics.

AMBRO Manufacturing will continue to focus on expanding and improving our core competencies of screen printing, sublimation and embroidery while dedicating resources to the development and growth of AMBRO Labs gives us a vehicle to add the additional elements of wearable technologies and smart cloths to our manufacturing capabilities.

cropped-Ambro-Labs-Logo-2.png

AMBRO Labs (DBA AMBRO Manufacturing)
6 Kings Court
Flemington, NJ 08822
(908) 806-8337 P
(908) 806-8337 F
Darren[at]AMBROmanufacturing.com

 

Recent Comments

Archives