Specialty Fabrics Review October 2019 - 52

FOCUS

ADVANCED TEXTILES

Researchers at the
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) Media
Lab have demonstrated
three classes of textile
sensors exploiting resistive,
piezoresistive and capacitive
properties of various textile
structures enabled by machine
knitting with conductive yarn.
The knit sensors are made with
commercially available yarn.
Photo: Daniel Oran.

Committing to standards
The European market influences open international
standards for e-textiles.
BY CHRIS JORGENSEN

I
How you can participate
*IPC E-Textiles Committee in Europe
is open to anyone to join, even
if you are not located in Europe.
If you have interest in joining
the committee, or any other IPC
e-textiles standards working group,
e-mail ChrisJorgensen@ipc.org.
*IPC E-Textiles Europe will be
held in Munich, Nov. 12-13, 2019.
Information may be found at
www.ipc.org/E-Textiles-EU19.
*To offer feedback to the IPC
E-Textiles Committee, visit
www.surveymonkey.com/r/wearables.

52 REVIEW OCTOBER 2019

n the spring of 2017, companies representing the global e-textiles community formed
the IPC D-70 E-Textiles Committee to develop IPC (Association Connecting Electronics
Industries®) international standards for their industry. As word spread about the committee
and its activities, the committee roster grew to more than 150 organizations from around the
world, many from Europe.
IPC standards working groups conduct most of their meetings through web conferences
and conference calls. Although this helps with people who may have travel restrictions and
ensures participant consistency from meeting to meeting, it also presents an issue because of
time zone differences; business hours for people in one region may be off hours for people from
other parts of the globe. Meeting participants may also have language barriers that prohibit
comfortable participation. Some groups will simply need to hold face-to-face meetings as well.
COMMITTING TO GLOBAL PARTICIPATION
As an international standards development organization that practices openness and fairness
in its standardization procedures, IPC has worked to address many of these concerns. IPC has
staff in the United States, China, India and Europe, and has created a framework for forming
regional committees to develop and influence IPC international standards on their local time,
in their local language and, if need be, at face-to-face meetings in their area.
The growth of the IPC E-Textiles Committee and IPC's international support network led
to the development of some new structured activities for the European e-textiles marketplace.
In late 2018, one of the IPC D-70 E-Textiles Committee members from Europe, Vladan Koncar
of ENSAIT GEMTEX research laboratory in France, approached IPC staff and the D-70
Committee chairs to express his interest in leading the development of standards activities
in Europe. Koncar and his colleagues had recently written IPC-WP-024, IPC White Paper on
Reliability and Washability of Smart Textile Structures-Readiness for the Market.
The white paper discusses the issues associated with the reliability of smart textiles after
multiple washing cycles and emphasizes efforts that industry and research laboratories must
undertake to make e-textile structures more robust and able to be washed similarly to everyday
textile products, such as garments, home textiles and technical textiles.
Koncar said there were more stories to be told by the European market and concerns
that could be addressed by an IPC committee through white papers and standards, and he

http://www.ipc.org/E-Textiles-EU19 http://www.surveymonkey.com/r/wearables

Specialty Fabrics Review October 2019

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