The innovation concerns the development of a sewing technology for joining textiles (carbon and glass fiber reinforced-fibers), inserts, stringers and sub-preforms with up to 3,000 stitches per minute.

Within the project ITA developed a handling unit for handling textiles, inserts, sub-preforms and stringers and provide them for the joining process. By the integration of the sewing machine in to the ITA-Preformcenter the application for the manufacturing of textile pre-forms could be proved. This provides new possibilities for an eco-nomically joining process for the manufacturing of frp.

The target group is the automotive, aerospace and engineering industry. The developed sewing machine is available by Nähmaschinenfabrik Emil Stutznäcker GmbH & Co.KG, Cologne. Techtextil Innovation Award is presented for innovative ideas and future-oriented developments in the field of technical textiles, nonwovens and functional apparel textiles.  

About the Institut für Textiltechnik (ITA) of RWTH Aachen University

The Institut für Textiltechnik (ITA) belongs to the elite university RWTH Aachen. Its core expertise consists of textile related produc-tion technologies and high performance materials. With the inaugura-tion of the Centre of High Performance Materials in December 2012 ITA offers small and medium industry direct access to scientific re-search especially in the fields of high modulus fibres and composites.

ITA provides research and development services and advanced training and creative workshops in cooperation with its partner com-pany 3T TextilTechnologieTransfer GmbH. Furthermore, ITA gradu-ates students in various textile related courses. www.ita.rwth-aachen.de

Starting in winter semester 2015/2016, ITA is offering the new inter-national Master degree “M.Sc. in Textile Engineering in cooperation with RWTH International Academy: www.master-mechanical-engineering.com/course/msc-textile-engineering