insulation and stupidity

INSULATION AND STUPIDITY

Since there are no records dating how long ago humans discovered the benefit of using the down from birds it wasn’t until the 1950’s that companies started to look at a synthetic material (polyester and in one case nylon fiber) to copy and replace down as an insulating medium.

The industry started out making a two-inch chopped staple polyester fiber which could be processed on existing batting making equipment that already made batting from cotton fiber. Basically, the two-inch polyester fiber that was 6 deniers became the fiber of choice. Eventually 3-M company came out with their micro denier fiberfill, less than one denier and called it Thinsulate. This caused the polyester fiber producers to develop fine denier polyester fiber for fiberfill.

What these polyester fiberfill producers ignored was the fact that the 3-M product which was a polypropylene product which went flat almost immediately when it was used in any garment, but it was most obvious when used in a sleeping bag, its original intended use. Why sleeping bags. A guy named David K. who worked at 3-M at the time when camping and let us say froze while using a store-bought bag. he worked with the melt blown polypropylene fiber that makes the thin face masks that are seen every where today. I do not recall if any of the more prominent brands at the time tried it, but it would prove to be a very successful failure. When it showed the same deterioration of loft in jackets, they blended the polypropylene with I believe a 6-denier polyester fiber for the purpose of bulking it up. But the bulking which was a 35 percent polyester and 65 percent polypropylene that proved this product was as successful failure as its predecessor. David K. came to my factory when I was in Columbia S.C. and I told him after listening to his and his sales managers sales pitch about thinsulate that I could make a pure polyester fiberfill for 1/8^th the price that is superior to their product. I also learned that neither he nor his associate knew a thing about insulation. 3-M had a large advertising budget to basically buy the business. So, you have stupid people selling a product to stupid people.

However, this product is being used in many different products to this day because of the advertising budget and all of the products prove they are not very good. The most noticeable product are boots. I have yet to speak with one person who owns boots from any manufacture with thinsulate as the insulation to work. All of the people who are responsible for the company they own or work for who constantly chose to use thinsulate are stupid in my opinion based on all of the knowledge we have acquired about this products lake of ability to perform for the intended purpose of being an insulating medium.

DuPont made a 2.5 denier fiber which when tested against the micro-fiber 3-M product was far superior, but it went no place in the marketplace because they did not want to put the advertising dollars into the product. I knew the guy At DuPont who worked on the project and he knew it was not a good product, so he told the marketing people to forget about it, he was smart.

Then Albany International came out with their product called primaloft which is basically a 2.5 denier fiber and they shouted from their roof top how good it was and of course they were wanting to get Natick Labs to sanction it for military sleeping bags and when tested it was once again a very successful failure. The Albany people were and still are very stupid. The Natick people are also very stupid. Why because no matter what you make in the form of an insulation medium with 2.5 denier chopped staple fiberfill it does not work. No matter the number of tests they have put these batting through they prove to have little heat retention and fail.

Recently I wrote about this new vivo fine denier fiberfill probably a 2.5 denier fiber is used. They are very stupid like all of their predecessors in the batting making business.

They just refuse to acknowledge these products cannot be made very lofty, must be quilted to stay together when laundered and all collapse or lose whatever loft, they may have very quickly. Why do they not recognize these faults in their product “because they are stupid”!

They all refuse to recognize and understand that their products or should I say product because they are all one and the same continue to fail to work and in the case of primaloft change the name of the same product with new language trying to sell it.

As I see it in mass, they are just plain old stupid.

They have caused the industry of fiberfill insulation users to shy away from the only insulating material on the planet that should be used for insulated clothing and sleeping bags is continuous filament fiberfill. Climashield to name the only one in existence. It not only makes all of the other materials that have preceded it obsolete, but it also made down obsolete. And I also include the down makers in the stupid category because they all know the pitfalls of down which can be summed up in on pitfall, it is called water.

However, I do believe some new genius will come along and dream up ways of selling their product a chopped staple one, that is the reality of people thinking they have something of value in the field of insulation and start offering it as the clo company is doing with their vivo product. They will fail!!!  

And they just do not understand they will never replace the Climashield product.