Engineering Value: Choosing the right Fabric for Proper Shading

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Creating a perfect solution is often a team work. Such may be the case in terms of shading alternatives and partnership between Draper® and Phifer, a third-generation, family-owned-and-managed textile weaver and manufacturer located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Jeff Miller, Director of Architectural Shading Alternatives at Draper, and Costs Strickland, National Market Supervisor for Sun Control Goods at Phifer Incorporated, explained how this relationship generates winning products and solutions.

Phifer may be the world’s major weaver of insect screening, shipping to over 100 countries. However they likewise have an expanded type of performance fabrics to match many different textile market segments, including sun-control items. Strickland has worked with Phifer and these materials for 33 years. And the Draper and Phifer romance goes back even longer.

Miller said Draper and Phifer have a genuine partnership, comprising idea, feedback and very best practice sharing. The partnership even includes product production.

The textile industry in North America is not the stronghold it was previously, with most textile businesses much time since moved overseas. On the other hand, Phifer is still going good as a U.S. manufacturer.

“Our survival, and not simply surviving, but thriving, has been the concentration of looking in everything we conduct,” Strickland said.

Phifer adheres to utilizing lean making ideas, ideas and methodologies to judge efficiencies and deploy improvements to keep them heading.

Aesthetics always factor right into a customer’s shading decision, but there are plenty of more considerations whenever choosing the proper solar shading answer. Strickland said it really is most important to look for the overall target or problem to resolve, then decide which cloth to use.

As well, a consideration that lots of might not think about when it comes to shading selection is acoustics. “How does this textile assist in my goals in lowering sound noise in a work place?,” Strickland said. “So, nowadays, our fabrics are analyzed and evaluated for his or her acoustical benefit.”