Textile Insight

LOWELL, MASSACHUSSETTS Mill City Modern A New Fabric Innovation Ecosystem Feeds Textile Industry Growth. By Emily Walzer T he view from Coffee & Cotton, a lively café on the top floor of Lowell's hip Mill No. 5 building, offers customers a good look at the past, present and future of textiles in this New England city. The spanking new Innovation Center, a shiny structure on the corner of Canal Street sits adjacent to the Merrimack River, a waterway that powered a vibrant textile industry here more than a century ago. The University of Massachusetts Lowell campus, known for its strong textile program, fills out the scene from the café's window. Like other areas rich in textile history, artist lofts and studio spaces fill renovated mill buildings that rim a downtown dotted with textile his- torical sites and references like the Warp & Weft restaurant and the Quilt Museum. Lowell is also home to an urban National Park; a highlight is the Boott Cotton Mill where visitors can experience an original weaving room running full throttle and get a sense of what life was like as a mill worker in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. But what makes Lowell, MA, unique is the recent big-time investment in its textile future. The new 28,000 square foot Innovation Center is a hub for the next generation of integrated fabrics, flexible electronics, robotics and automation. On any given day robots are performing vari- ous tasks while high-tech smart materials are being developed for military and commercial end use. The very latest testing equipment and prototyping machinery is found here used in a combination of interdisciplinary research programs. The state-of-the-art Center brings together three of the U.S. Department of Defense's Manufacturing USA Institutes under one roof: Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA), NextFlex, and Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing. UMass Lowell used most of an $11.3 million state grant to build the Fabrics Discovery Center (FDC), which occupies multiple floors of the building. (The FDC is also funded in part by an initiative of the Defense Department to invest in new technologies developed within the United States.) The facility is an end-to-end fabric innovation ecosystem with capabilities ranging from resin compounding equipment, fiber extrusion lines, textile assembly (e.g., knitting and weaving) and textile finishing (e.g., coating, digital printing, bonding/ seaming) equipment. Testing capabilities include mechanical and thermal properties, flammability, permeability and durability. "We have a vision," says Cheryl Gomes, project manager, CORE Research Facility, UMass Lowell. "The whole time we were doing this a few of us had the entire picture in mind. This is supposed to be revolutionary. And so our thinking was 'let's make it so.'" New Ideas through Partnerships & Research Gomes walked me through the Fabrics Discovery Center earlier this Fall. Touring the impressive space one can't help get- ting excited by the range and scope of the projects underway and feel optimistic about the potential of textile technology. There are areas devoted to pilot production and test facilities that will enable companies to evaluate new fiber additive and materials, new modifications to assembly and finishing and new designs. On the first floor, Fashion Makerspace products will take shape on equip- ment designed with the future in mind. Even the sewing machines are modern marvels, with bio-fit chairs and standing sewing stations similar in concept to popular standing desks at executive offices. Here are just a few highlights that stood out during my visit to the Fabric Discover Center: • Research focused on Thermally Adaptive Insulation done in conjunction with HEROES and Natick Labs in nearby Natick, MA that advances thermo- regulation properties. The study looks at combining three polymers with different thermal characteristics in a tri-component fiber so that when temperature decreases, the fiber crimps allowing for more trapped air and thus enhanced warmth. When exposed to an increase in temperature the fiber returns to original state. A new Thermal Mechanical Analyzer (TMA) machine arrived at the Center the day prior to my visit and will be used to evaluate a temperature profile of a material. (HEROES is the acronym for Harnessing Emerging Research Opportunities to Empower Soldiers.) • In the Fabrication Room, a new project devoted to research on a wire/ fiber coating that would create an organic photovoltaic fiber. In other words, a fiber that would use solar energy to power a sensor without relying on a battery. • Another project collaboration with HEROES is developing mosquito protection via micro encapsulation. The concept is to embed mosquito repellent encapsulated by a shell, rather than on the fabric surface. The same concept could apply to putting a flame retardant in the capsule designed to break at a specified heat. Also in the area of flame retardant research is looking at safer, non-toxic materials, like tannin-based bio- derived polyphenols. • A new roll- to-roll coater is being used to coat a plastic or a fabric that can be printed using the 3D printer. This is just the start. The Fabric Discovery Center opened officially less than six months ago, but Gomes' vision is coming into focus as Lowell, MA, now plays a role in the next revolution in functional fabrics. l 28 • Textile Insight ~ November/December 2018 textileinsight.com The Merrimack River, Lowell, MA. The new 28,000 square foot Innovation Center is a hub for the next generation of integrated fabrics, flexible electronics, robotics and automation. TRENDSETTERS 2018

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