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    Content by Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson
    E-Textile Tailor Shop by KOBAKANT
    The following institutions have funded our research and supported our work:

    Since 2020, Hannah is guest professor of the Spiel&&Objekt Master's program at the University of Performing Arts Ernst Busch in Berlin

    From 2013-2015 Mika was a guest professor at the eLab at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee

    From July - December 2013 Hannah was a researcher at the UdK's Design Research Lab

    From 2010-2012 Mika was a guest researcher in the Smart Textiles Design Lab at The Swedish School of Textiles

    From 2009 - 2011 Hannah was a graduate student in the MIT Media Lab's High-Low Tech research group led by Leah Buechley


    In 2009 Hannah and Mika were both research fellows at the Distance Lab


    Between 2003 - 2009 Hannah and Mika were both students at Interface Cultures
    We support the Open Source Hardware movement. All our own designs published on this website are released under the Free Cultural Works definition
    Actuators

    Fabric Speaker Swatch Example

    Inspired by Marcelo Coehlo’s paper speaker and Vincent Leclerc’s Accouphene textile speaker, we have been trying out different techniques on building fabric speakers.
    Woven speaker >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=5509
    Knit speaker >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=4465
    Embroidered speaker >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=2936

    Some experiments made by Claire Williams with the couching embroidery technique and a coil basket weaving technique:
    >> https://xxxclairewilliamsxxx.wordpress.com/electronic-textiles/#Textile

    Here is a embroidered fabric speaker made as a swatch sample with step by step tutorials.

    Materials and Tools

    Materials: cotton fabric, cotton thread, copper thread (Karl-Grimm), neodymium magnet, copper conductive fabric, fusible interfacing

    Tools: sewing needle, scissors, iron,

    Tools to test: audio amplifier (we use this amplifier from adafruit)

    Diagram


    Diagram of a speaker


    or read this article >> http://www.explainthatstuff.com/loudspeakers.html

    Step by Step

    thread the copper conductive thread to needle (you may need a needle with big eye like embroidery needle) and bring this end to the back of the fabric, leave about 10cm on this side. Take out the thread from the needle.
    Flip the fabric to the front side. Thread the cotton thread to the needle. Use couching stitch to fix the copper conductive thread onto the base fabric. The copper thread is placed as a spiral shape. Make sure each circle of the spiral does not touch each other. The copper conductive thread is not isolated unlike magnet wire, so it does not work as coil when they are touching each other.

    Here is a youtube tutorial on couching stitch.

    When the embroidered spiral gets big enough, bring the both end of the copper conductive thread to one end of the fabric. Place two small pieces of copper conductive fabric with fusible on the fabric, using iron. Sandwich the copper thread’s end with copper conductive fabric and base fabric so it gets fixed and electrically connect to the copper fabric.

    Now, time to test. connect the Audio Amplifier to the computer (or MP3 player.. anything that play sound). We added mini-jack cable to it to make it easy to connect with computers. connect power (we use lipo battery) to power the amplifier, then connect the output sound (A+ and A-) to the fabric speaker we just made. Place a big strong magnet from the back of the fabric speaker. Do you hear the sound?

    speaker test

    You can also make speaker with other techniques. Here is my trial on copper conductive fabric cut with Vinyl cutter, then fused onto fabric with fusible interfacing.
    speaker test



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