This sample came from The Swedish School of Textile. It shrinks when heat is applied and it is not reversible. When knitted together with heat emitting thread, you can control the shape (shrink) of the textile dynamically. Only downside is that it is not reversible.
Here is a project using Pemotex called “touching loop” by Delia Dumitrescu and Anna Persson.
http://bada.hb.se/handle/2320/5826
PDF with picture. Scroll down to page 16
Plug and Wear sells a shrinking sewing thread that shrinks 30% in length when heat is applied to it (with an iron).
“This comes very handy to sew components on our textile perfboard. Just sew them normally and then put your pressing iron close to the back of the circuit. The thread will shrink and all components will firmly be connected to the textile perfboard.”
pdf-link is dead.
i wonder if one can use it for isolating the conductive threads; for another trial i especially need sum isolation for the conductive threads that are distributed by Karl Grimm: (As can be seen on in “conductive threads on this site) They sell vectran with conductive coat – i didn’t know what vectran is, but i found out that it’s being used for marine hawsers which means the material is highly tensile.
Being able to coat several threads of this vectran, one could twist them together to a bigger cable/rope and use them as electronic connection and suspension of heavy levitating hardware (or, in my case, as hardly visible juggling-poi-”chains”, while the electronics are being hidden in the jugglers’ sleeve/gauntlets)