another charlatan

The following article I have reprinted from the Industrial Fabrics Association on line magazine which I received today.

Heat-conducting graphene jacket

December 1st, 2018 / By: IFAI / Projects

Lightweight and breathable, Vollebak’s graphene jacket conducts heat and electricity thanks to a thin layer of graphite, the material used to make pencils.

Part jacket. Part science experiment. That’s how the makers of a new graphene-coated jacket describe their garment. Only a single atom thick, graphene is invisible to the naked eye. It’s lightweight, highly conductive, and is the strongest material known to humankind. But graphene also comes with challenges. It’s hard to work with and very expensive to produce at scale. That’s why maker Vollebak, a two-year-old startup dedicated to designing cutting-edge sports gear, released its jacket as an experimental prototype.

According to their web site this garment is $695.00 and they claim they have sold out. The probably had a production run of one garment.

This first edition jacket is reversible. One side is a thin layer of graphene and polyurethane blended together; the other is nylon and elastane. The graphene fundamentally changes the material’s mechanical and chemical properties, enabling it to conduct electricity.

The graphene is mixed with the polyurethane which is then applied to the fabric. How this changes the mechanical and chemical properties is a mystery to me. I have never known of any fabrics mechanical and chemical properties changing when polyurethane was applied to them. Conducting electricity I believe is a farfetched statement. Then again every company wants their garments to be electrified somehow.

It also conducts heat. When the graphene side is worn next to the body, it helps equalize skin temperature by transferring heat from warm parts of the body to cold. The closer the material to the body, the more effective it is at regulating temperature. In tests, skin temperature is increased by an average of 2 degrees Celsius.

“It also conducts heat” is an unfinished sentence. All fabric when touching a heat source such as the human body will “conduct heat away from the source”. Now we have a dumb I mean dumb statement “transferring heat from a warm part of the body to cold” part of the body? Is that what they mean? The closer the material is to the body the faster it will conduct the heat away from the body cooling it. It does not increase the skin temperature; period!

You can even heat the jacket by leaving it in the sun with the graphene side exposed. Turn it inside out and wear it and it acts like a radiator.

Fantastic, but then again all dark garments, theirs is black, will absorb the rays of the sun and heat up. When you put the garment on it feels nice and warm, however the heat from the fabric is moving away from you to the colder air. Heat goes to cold. That concept is unknown to these people and everyone else in the outdoor industry who claims their low loft, no loft slim fitting jackets keep you warm, they are a bad joke and there is no telling how many people have had very bad experiences wearing these garments.

The reality is that people are obviously cold in so many of the brands and it has gotten back to them so they are looking for a savior insulating material and obviously not finding one. So they look at things like electrically heated garments and they will fail just like the chopped staple fibers do and the reflective materials do. What has thankfully left the market place is the phase change trash from “outlast” which hasn’t outlasted anything. The only phase change from outlast was when you went from the warm phase to the frigid phase in a matter of minutes.

Maybe one day these garment marketing geniuses will discover a product that is a savior when it comes to insulation, believe it or not Climashield. When all is said and done the Climashield/Lamilite will still reign supreme in the field of insulation!!!

NOW FOR BOOTS

A customer told me of a company called Thursday Boot Co. They make from what I can see on their web site chukka boots primarily. Most are made in Mexico and one or two styles are made in the USA. I wrote to them since phone numbers are not available about making boots for me. They had no interest. Anyway they do not as far as I saw use goretex or Thinsulate so that is good.

Therefore my advice is that you buy their all leather boots, get my Lamilite socks and if required my over boots for cold weather.

Maybe at some point they will become interested in the Lamilite lining material for their own line of boots.