I'm after some sort of introduction / comparison of all the different clothing fabrics available at the moment. I started to look at pulling something together myself, but I don't know enough about the fabrics and just plain gave up when I saw how many there were. I'd got to 8 fabrics for soft shell alone, and that was just from Gore, Polartec and Schoeller.
The Polartec website was quite useful is providing comparision info (fabric A is twice and breathable as fabric B etc, but Gore's site was useless for this). None of the sites I looked at really compared fabrics between manufacturers, except one I found, but that could not distinguish at all between Gore-Tex Windstopper and Polartec Windbloc for example.
Keith Conover put together a summary that was very useful. He has updated it a few times but the sheer number of new fabric produces means that it is always getting rapidly out of date. Still, good effort on his part to put so much info together anyway...
"Pertex et al This includes a variety of similar fabrics—a fairly open PTFE layer bonded to some other fabric"
Err... no. Pertex is a range of microfibre, dense weave fabrics, using nylon or polyester. Some of them are PU coated. Some of them oare used to create Gor-tex fabrics, being used as lightweight face fabrics for the Gore laminate.
"Cloudveil (Dermizax) and Marmot (MemBrain) have stretchy-versions of GoreTex"
Not quite sure what he's trying to say here; Dermizax is a Toray product, and nothing to do with Gore. MemBrain is Marmot's own name for a fabric, probably from one of the big manufacturers (Toray, perhaps?).
Nevertheless, it's saved and bookmarked for future reference...
It's convinced me that I am never going to fully understand the technology of fabrics!
It's worth realising this sort of limit: fabric technology is potentially very high tech and there are some seriously bright people working in the field, so a full understanding will require experience in the field, a very large brain and very probably a relevant PhD. I know I'll never be at more than general summary level, despite being a sad gear junkie with a couple of science degrees.
Cheers for that link, Pete, I just paid 5 dollars for that (presumably inflation...).
It's an extremely competitive field, with huge rewards for the companies that make it (think of Gore!). I'm about to do a module in polymeric materials, and some of this sort of stuff is covered - very excited!
None of the sites I looked at really compared fabrics between manufacturers, except one I found, but that could not distinguish at all between Gore-Tex Windstopper and Polartec Windbloc for example.
Windstopper, now in three great tasting flavours, is a expanded PTFE membrane whereas Windbloc is a PU-based membrane. And of course Power Shield, from Polartec, is a perforated PU membrane technology... It is confusing, especially since Gore's waterproof fabrics are also a PTFE membrane, but with a very thin layer of PU on the inside of the membrane to protect it from contamination....
Then there are a lot of own-brand fabrics, many of which are a PU-based coating / laminate and made by specialist fabrics companies - Toray for example, Pertex etc - then branded by outdoors companies. Eg: Hyvent DT (TNF) and Triplepoint (Lowe Alpine) could theoretically come from the same factory, though I don't think they actually do.
Pertex has a waterproof fabric on the way, I think. That should confuse a few people...
