Because I’m extending the breathing_time project into a workshop I’m doing some research on non-woven materials to make the cones from. The first version was made of paper and felt. It looked very nice but wasn’t very practical. Paper folds and crumbles easily. The felt on the face gets dirty and as it was glued to the paper I couldn’t replace it. The department of wearable senses from the TU/e kindly gave me some samples to experiment with. These are the results:
Lantor producer of all sorts of non-woven materials:
To start of with the best one. This is a thin, black non-woven. It’s very easy to work with. Can be glued with just ordinary collall glue. It sticks very well. The ease of working reminds one of paper. It has some nice extras. You can use sticky tape on it and you can remove that tape without leaving a trace, even after a few days:
This is very useful, it allows me to make a replaceable, protective edge. The bare edge is too sharp on the face. You can also glue two layers on top of each other to make the cone more firm. This has a very stylish appearance:
You can just use scissors to cut out the shape. And it doesn’t tear like paper. So attaching the strap is no problem.
I also tried another non-woven by Lantor. It has a felt like appearance. Very nice but it is too floppy for my purpose and quite hard to glue:
Colbond producer of all sorts of non-woven materials:
This semi transparent, thermally bounded non-woven has a very appealing look. It is stiff, even a bit sharp on the edges. I was really looking forward to trying this out but the result was a bit disappointing. It was hard to glue due to its’ open structure. It also turned out to be very brittle. A fold doesn’t go away (view right end). In that sense it is worse then paper. As I will be reusing these cones with different people they have to stay clean and in shape. This one didn’t stand that test.
