A Multiple-Partner Collaboration Designs Functional Smart Jacket With Warmth on Demand

The fashion-functional Multi-Tech Commuter Smart Jacket to be unveiled for the first time at the IDTechEx Show! in Santa Clara, California.

The Multi-Tech Commuter Jacket, also known as MTC, was unveiled today. The smart jacket was commissioned by Lubrizol Corporation, a company that produces and supplies technologies that improve the performance of its customer’s products. Together with Principled Design, ACI Materials, and Butler Technologies, the project took nine months to go from concept to completion – the actual making of the jacket took less than four months.

Image Credit: Lubrizol

Looking to deliver form, comfort and functionality, the experts first delved deeper into understanding advanced design, materials and the interplay between technology, before turning innovative ideas into prototypes and then commercial scale realities. “First and foremost, our jacket had to look good, feel good and be easy to maintain. In other words, we designed this jacket for humans,” explained Despina Papadopoulos from Principled Design in NY who was commissioned to design and oversee the development of the jacket.

“First and foremost, our jacket had to look good, feel good and be easy to maintain.”

Each company, involved in the development of the Lubrizol MTC Jacket, brought their expertise and understanding to the table. Working together they tackled problem-solving relating to the advanced design, materials and the interplay between technology to deliver form, comfort and functionality. The MTC jacket was designed using Lubrizol materials, which include stretch fabrics, flexible substrates, hot melt thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) film adhesives, 3D printing TPU filaments and stretch and durability control fabric coatings that ensured the function, comfort and durability over the life of the garment.

Image Credit: Lubrizol

When it came to incorporating Lubrizol’s highly flexible material solutions into a wearable platform, Principled Design selected ACI Materials (Goleta, CA) for their expertise in conductive inks, encapsulants and resistance heater flexible circuit technology and Butler Technologies, Inc. (Butler, PA) for their proven capabilities in developing printed electronics.

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Although it only has one mode, which means that the temperature cannot be regulated, the MTC jacket will give a user about 7 hours of heat. On the jacket as a wearable, Papadopoulos told FashNerd.com, “We wanted to create a jacket that showed off the notion of garments that demonstrated clothes that can transform themselves. We wanted to push the notion of bringing to life fabrics that are dynamic and can adapt themselves to different contexts. (Overall) we wanted people to think that first and foremost the MTC is a stylish and comfortable jacket, and the technology with is an added benefit of an that elevates the elevates the experience of wearing the jacket”. Adding, “The MTC jacket is 100% scaleable. Although we only made a short run as a demonstration, we did not make any shortcuts. We didn’t make it as if we were making 10; we made it like we were making 10,000. It was part of the exercise to design, build and engineer everything with the customer in mind.”

Image Credit: Lubrizol

If you would like to check out the latest smart jacket, you should head over to The IDTechEx Show!. The two-day event, which starts today, until 15 November 2018, is a trade show that presents the latest emerging technologies including 3D Printing, Electric Vehicles, Energy Storage, Graphene, Internet of Things, Printed Electronics, Sensors and Wearable Technology.

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Founding editor-in-chief of FashNerd.com, Muchaneta is currently one of the leading influencers writing about the merger of fashion with technology and wearable technology. She has also given talks at Premiere Vision, Munich Fabric Start and Pure London, to name a few. Besides working as a fashion innovation consultant for various fashion companies like LVMH Atelier, Muchaneta has also contributed to Vogue Business, is a senior contributor at The Interline and an associate lecturer at London College of Fashion, UAL.