New Collaboration
The advancement of digital technology in the fitness, sports and wellbeing sector offers a wide range of new business opportunities, particularly through the integration of sensors in clothing for interactive solutions that improve the movement experience and performance of athletes. This innovative approach is the focus of the "DiMo-NEXT - Digital Motion" cooperation project, in which KARL MAYER joined as an textile industry partner in 2024 and our TEXTILE-CIRCUIT team contributes with expertise in warp knitted wearables. The project's vision, approach and other project partners can be found on the DiMo-NEXT website.
For trials as part of the project, we are using the MJ 52 1/S machine with its flexible string bar technology, which is located at our partner V-Trion, a research company in the field of smart textiles in Lustenau, Austria.
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New Sensors
We have been working on improving our sensors recently.
Those 3-dimentional sensors are fully warp knitted during the production of the textile.
Their structure improves the signal as they have more skin contact. This permits a slightly looser fit of the garment than before.
Check out the media galery to see the new Shirt in action while measuring the heartbeat of the wearer.
Smart Shirt
This shirt features three different sensor systems that are fully textile and have been integrated in the fabric during its production. For the different sensors we used five conductive materials that are all integrated as threads.
With the shirt we can measure heart rate, temperature and humidity of the wearer.
If you want to know more about the fabrication of our Prototype don't forget to watch our making of in the media gallery on the left.
Textile Based Gesture Recognition
This warp knitted gesture recognition textile is realized on a KARL MAYER Double Needlebar Raschelmachine with stringbars.
The conductive yarn is energized by a connected control unit and thus creates an electric field around the textile surface. If a hand penetrates this field, the electric field distribution is distorted. The field variations are detected and interpreted by means of an algorithm into different gestures.
This technology is suitable for applications in automotive or home textile interior. For visual demonstration, we have created a presentation that can be controlled using the textile.
Textile Control Panel
This textile remote control is done on a Multibar-machine of KARL MAYER. The conductive threads form buttons that send a signal to the robot while being touched.
The functions can be integrated to different ground structures that might be rigid or elastic.
These control panels can be used for different applications. Take a look at the different prototypes we already realized.
Inductive Charging
This textile structure can be used for inductive charging. The spool consists of 16 windings and measures 5cm (2”). It is made on a Multibar-machine. The windings are formed by isolated copper wires that are directly applied during the production process. The ground structure can be modified for variation in its flexibility.
TEXTILE-CIRCUIT Technology
All our TEXTILE-CIRCUIT products are based on the warp knitting technology by KARL MAYER. With our technology we are able to create products with various textile characteristics. During the production process we can use our Stringbar technology to form functional structures. These can be shaped the way the application requires it. The structures consist of an additional yarn system that is integrated in the ground fabric. With tailored fiber placement we can add function exactly where it is needed. This way you can add different materials like insulated and non-insulated conductive threads at the same time.
- Producing textiles and integrating function directly in one step
- Tailored fiber placement of functional material
- Keeping the textile characteristics
- Fast, well established textile production process
- Various textile structures can be formed