2023 chapter
Design strategies for e-textile manufacturing
In Smart Clothes and Wearable Technology (pp. 485–505).
E-textile products are difficult to design and produce due to the required co-design of an electronics system, including a power source, interconnects, and sensors/actuators, with a textile platform. With such a complex system, e-textile product design necessitates many intentional manufacturing decisions to choose the correct materials and method to meet the design criteria with given constraints. This chapter explores common textile manufacturing methods to integrate electronics from a fibre, textile, and garment perspective as well as their potential and limitations. Developments in automation for the textile industry are discussed and their capability to enable better scalable manufacturing solutions for e-textiles. As a demonstration of the challenges of e-textile design and fabrication, the chapter reviews three use-case products. Here, trade-offs between the design and materials are discussed, alongside observations in the fabrication processes that would influence scale-up and performance. The products are considered from a systems approach, emphasising the need to consider the interactions between materials, and how each component influences the performance of the full e-textile garment. The chapter concludes with a future outlook on scalable e-textile manufacturing and how the methods discussed could improve the design criteria of the case study products.