lara's itp blog » Testing materials part 2

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Testing materials part 2

February 25, 2010 - 5:10 pm

Within this post I am testing two types of conductive felted shapes. Some are made by needle felting using the conductive batts I made. Others are made by crocheting merino wool yarn/conductive thread mix, and then hand felting those pieces to shrink and tighten.

felted soft conductive materials

failed resistance test of conductive felt

This tendril was felted out of the first conductive batting I carded. It was thin and didn’t have enough steel wool distributed throughout, so I could not get a proper reading with the leads at either end while stretching and scrunching it up.

testing resistance

This is the 6.5″ medium length tendril from the first material test post. I felted it by machine and hand to the final length of 5″.
here is the resistance measured after I felted it up
- ~14 ohms relaxed
- ~6 ohms stretched

testing resistance of felted tendril

I crocheted another swatch specifically to felt. This is a 17×20 sc stitch swatch.

Before Felting
dimensions: 4.5″ x 4.25″
- ~3.5 Ohms relaxed
- ~1.7 Ohms stretched

Felted
dimensions: 3.5″ x 3.25″
- ~4 ohms relaxed
- ~2 ohms stretched

read on the diagonal after felting
- ~ 5 ohms relaxed
- ~ 3 ohms stretched

NOTE: I believe that the felted and non felted readings should be considered synonymous. It seems that I might of just rounded up on the one for the felt, and since the readings always have a +/-2 ohm range in each state, they can be considered falling in the same range. aaaahhh… the inconsistencies of wearable tech….

small crocheted ball with pure wool yarn and conductive thread

testing as pressure sensor

Untitled from lara grant on Vimeo.

I need to test other materials in order to see what other materials I can use to make a soft pressure sensor, moving onto felt medium, I needle felted a pure wool ball and wrapped it in conductive wool.