A lot of material happened to arrive by post today. Very fast were the retroreflective strips samples send to me by Tusk international. Test I’d done earlier on this type of material was disappointing. But the tests with thermochromic ink on the stripes looked really good. I’m very pleased with the heating of the conductive fabric. It has ultra low resistance (0.05 Ohm) and therefore needs less power. My old friend and screen printing specialist Peter can hopefully help me get more opacity and smoothness with the ink. I hope to do some tests next week. Things to look into: using more pigment, binding, UV radiation. I’ll try and make an appointment with Zijdelings next week. They sell the thermo pigments and also silk metallic organza in different colours.
- Heating the reflective strip
I had a brainwave and realized that I could also use silver conductive fabric for the strips if things don’t work out with the retroreflective material. The copper fabric gives excellent results when painted with the thermochromic ink.