Fabric Touch Tester (FTT)

Fabric hand properties are extremely important for apparel and textile industry. Many companies in Hong Kong and China reported that they can produce products with similar quality level in color and design, but have great difficulties to produce fabrics with the same quality in hand properties comparing with Italian products, which become a major weakness in the intensive market competitions. In this project, we will address this issue by redesigning and developing a professional prototype instrument (called “Fabric Hand Tester”) to measure fabric hand properties on the basis of our patented invention, which can measure a range of fabric hand properties such as fabric stiffness/softness, fabric roughness/ smoothness, fabric fullness and warmness/coolness to the touch within a few minutes and generate data outputs quickly. Further, we will design and develop user-friendly software to interface the instrument with computer to calculate indexes, assess grades and generate quality control charts automatically. The key research goal of this project is to transform the laboratory prototype apparatus into a professional testing instrument by re-designing the hardware and software with independently owned IP rights.