The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : An engineering marvel from students

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Friday, Jun 13, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

An engineering marvel from students

Karthik Madhavan

It took them 7 kg of fibre, a month and some hard thinking to make it

PHOTO: M. GOVARTHAN

New use: Students and faculty of the S.S.M.College of Engineering, Komarapalayam, display T-shirts knitted from bamboo fibre. –

KOMARAPALAYAM: Out of bamboo comes not only music but also T-shirts, say textile technology students of S.S.M. College of Engineering.

The students S. Aravindan, B. Jana, S. John Josea and N. Ramesh Babu along with faculty S. Senthil Nathan have knit t-shirts using bamboo fibre. The quartet took up the challenge as part of their project work.

Says Mr. Jana: “We wanted to try something different, and chose bamboo fibre at our guide’s instance.” They bought imported bamboo fibre and tried knitting it.

In doing so the boys had difficulty. “Hitherto the fibre was knitted after blending cotton but an all-bamboo T-shirt was a challenge in that the knitting machine’s speed had to brought down,” says Mr. Aravindan. The boys halved the speed. It took them 7 kg of fibre, a month and some hard thinking to produce about half-a-dozen T-shirts.

The boys then dyed the t-shirts to discover that bamboo had better colour absorption capacity, greater lustre, better anti-microbial properties and poorer colour bleeding properties than cotton.

They also found out that it was lighter in weight and possessed better moisture capacity, meaning better sweat absorption capacity. The T-shirts’ bursting strength (strength of the yarn) was poorer compared to cotton. It was costly as well. The quartet says it is yet to explore the all-bamboo T-shirts’ marketing potential. The college chairman, M. S. Mathivanan, appreciated the boys’ efforts.

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