Skip to main content

Noise Tests

Using the conductive fabric demonstrated in the previous post, I have now hooked them up to a number of square wave generators I made last summer, using them in the place of the 470Kohm potentiometers I was originally using to
vary the frequency of the wave.

They have a relatively low resistance, being made partially, as they are, of steel. In the range of 2-7Kohms, which is a great deal less than the POT's I was originally using. This means that I am somewhat stuck with the squeaky/screechy end of the waveform and can't get any of those deep rumbles or farting sounds I love so much.

It's fun anyway. Like I say, I'm not sure for what, but it gives me a much more tangible way of measuring the variable resistance of various fabrics and so on

Tomorrow if I get time I'll be in the Print Room at college trying out some conductive dyes and foils to see what I can potentially achieve by printing traces onto fabric.

Comments

Valerie said…
I've thought about using that conductive yarn to make RFID protective purses and wallets.
16 January 2012 at 14:08
Andrew Kieran said…
hmm. i wonder how you'd test it? do you think you could use it to make phone pouches that cut off wi-fi and suchlike

there's anti-static fabrics you can buy that are specifically designed to filter out radio waves, I think they use them in certain places to block mobile phone signals, could this be an option too?
16 January 2012 at 14:12
Anonymous said…
Wowee, sounds like a chanter! interesting Andrew!
16 January 2012 at 21:16
Valerie said…
Hi Andrew...
I suppose you could test it with one of those rfid tags that show up in consumer goods against the rfid tag reader in the store.

Essentially what you would be making is a faraday cage. I don't know if the silk or merino + stainless steel yarns have a continuous filament of stainless steel in them. The whole thing has to be a complete circuit for it to work.
18 January 2012 at 13:04
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tablet Weaving Lesson #1: Backstrap weaving a simple diamond motif

This is the first in a series of video and photo tutorials showing basic to advanced tablet-weaving concepts. These lessons shall each build on the last and hopefully take the viewer from simple diamond patterns up to more complicated double face pattern weaving with finer yarns and eventually onto the heady heights of brocading and other fancy techniques (just as soon as I learn how to do them myself). In this first lesson we'll learn the basic weaving steps involved in weaving a diamond pattern in the backstrap style. This lesson is meant for someone who has purchased a ready-made warp from me. The next lesson shall detail how to design and make this warp oneself. And we begin This is the basic pattern we are making. The woven band is tied to my waist with another strap. I am holding a small stick shuttle in my right hand which contains the weft. In front of me are the cards, each card has 4 warp threads going through it. The gap that you can see is called the ...
4 comments
Read more

24 shaft patterns - all the fun

 Yo-Yo-Yo! 24-shaft weavin in the house yo! i think that's enough pretend hip-hop talk for now, eh? so yeah, here are three of the more successful results of my cotton warp on 24 shafts. i am really beginning to envy the 3rd and 4th years working on compu-dobby systems now. you spend 2 hours weaving and 2 hours making a peg plan, and it hurt my back putting little pegs into little holes. and of course all the little pegs and the little holes are almost imperceptibly different sizes, so not all pegs fit all holes, and sometimes you have to stuff wee bits of yarn in as well to get them to stay. and then sometimes they're not far in enough and they jam the dobby mechanism, and sometimes they're too far in and they jame the dobby mechanism. and sometimes a link breaks and the whole mechanism jams. and sometimes all the shafts lift at once and you can't figure out why. and sometimes shafts just bounce off their strings and you can't figure out why, ...
5 comments
Read more

Building a jack loom Part 1: Vague plans and messy diagrams

I've been thinking about it for a while to be fair. What I'm thinking about is an 8 shaft folding jack loom. The interesting part comes when I point out that I'm going to build an electric dobby controller into the bottom of it so it operates from one pedal and a computer program. So far I've been thinking and thinking and I'm basically roughly copying the kind of frame you'd find in a Siever's school or Baby wolf loom. Basically it's like an X that folds up on itself with the castle in the middle. Should be able to reduce it's depth from 3 feet to about 1 for storage. I don't think it's really that difficult to design the loom frame, aside from building the beams and making the ratchets and so on, which I may just jigsaw out of thick MDF. I have most of the wood I need asides from some panelling and I need to buy some aluminium sheet to make the shaft dividers with and also to hold the shaft bodies together with. The rising levers w...
5 comments
Read more