Textiles aren't dead in these United States

InTech, Jun 2007 by Sheble, Nicholas

The drumbeat of Asian-produced yarns, materials, and clothing is deafening in North Carolina and the southeastern U.S. Plenty of mills have closed over the years in these parts. That's the truth.

However, that is not the complete story.

The ISA Tar Heel Capital Area section met at North Carolina State University (NCSU) College of Textiles Open House at its April section gathering. (ISA has a Textile Technical Interest Group: http://www.isa.org/TextilelG.)

The Open House portrayed the textile industry as an advanced, cutting edge, and lucrative place. There was no grim talk in these quarters. China only manufactures clothes. The U.S. industry is crossing science and materials and creating innovative fibrous systems.

First of all, there is the nonwovenmaterial industry. The Nonwovens Institute (NCRC) started at NCSU in 1991 from seed money coming from the State of North Carolina, the National Science Foundation, and private industry.

The NCRC is now a degree granting part of the University. The U.S. nonwoven industry has annual sales of $50 billion and employs 160,000 people. The U.S. has 30% of the world's nonwoven market and production.

The products include apparel but also much more-home textiles, industrial, medical, architectural, transportation, protective, and even electronic textiles.

The College of Textiles at NCSU sees industry expansion in other ways too. The enrollment has more than doubled in the last five years. All of the students who graduated this year had job offers prior to collecting their sheepskins.

second, there is the National Textile Center, which is a consortium of universities that is funding research and building research facilities "for the advancement of scientific knowledge pertaining to fiber, fiber products, and fibrous materials."

They have built laboratories for analytical services, staple nonwovens, hydroentangling, fluid dynamics, image analysis, polymers, extrusion, 3-D weaving, and tissue engineering.

Finally, there is the biotextile and medical textile work that is ongoing at NCSU's College of Textiles. This includes a wide range of applications, products, and markets; medical textiles for healthcare; surgical/implantable biotextile devices; and biotexiles for regenerative medicine.

The jargon at this point takes a medical, polysyllabic tack and tends to make the eyes glaze over. Suffice to say, surgical textile implants and conduits are at work inside living beings, and this is the future.

The talk at the ISA Tar Heel meeting was not about clothing. It was about science, chemistry, and automation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nicholas Sheble (nsheble@isa.org) is senior technical editor at InTech and a member of the ISA Tar Heel Capital Area section.