openMaterials

This mitten lights up when its wearer shakes hands with someone. It has two exposed soft contacts around the thumb and across the palm which, when bridged by bare skin, turn on the LED embedded on the flower. The mitten itself was created by fashion designer Isabel Tomás, and we then sewed a simple touch [...]

Conductive yarn is a great material to experiment with, but it is difficult to buy in small quantities. Hannah Perner-Wilson from ‘How to get what you want‘ has negotiated with the manufacturer Schoeller to place a minimum order of 30 kilograms, and is looking for others who may want to make a collective purchase. She’s [...]

More interesting news from Stanford University’s research on carbon nanotubes, via a Printed Electronics World article: Ordinary textiles could be transformed into batteries that hold up to three times more energy than a mobile phone battery, by simply dipping them into nanoparticle-infused ink. Conventional batteries are made by coating metallic foil in a particle slurry and [...]

Just announced on the RepRap blog: The Foresight Institute has announced its Kartik M. Gada Humanitarian Innovation Prize to design and build a better RepRap. There is an interim prize of $20,000, and a grand prize of $80,000. I am particularly excited about these specific aims of the contest: :: Print at least three different materials, including [...]

Researchers at Stanford University seem to have done it again. This time, a paper titled “Highly Conductive Paper for Energy Storage Devices,” published on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes a technique for using ordinary paper and coating it with a special ink, composed of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires, to create [...]

A simple switch made with QTC sheet. Quantum tunnelling composite (QTC) is a smart flexible polymer, with extraordinary electrical properties, used for pressure switching and sensing. In its normal state it’s a near-perfect electrical insulator, but when deformed QTC becomes a metal-like conductor capable of passing very high currents. In fact, a QTC button measuring 4mm [...]