TEXTILEGUY

Yes, Cordura is a textile. Its mainly used in the USA where Invista have a brand hold on the market, but alot of the Cordura you may see now, is not the real thing, but a reasonable copy. Price pressure has impacted on Cordura. No, I dont jump - I am considered as an asset to our business and am under some strict rules as to what I may and may not do when it comes to risk . I often joke, that I am also involved in airbag and ballistic protection, but also dont crash my SUV or let the wife take pot shots at me ....

So, yesterday was my first official day to post. I am a textile designer. Have been designing aeronautical fabrics for the past 26 years - for parachute, paragliders and some stranger projects in between. Decided to become more active to bring the textile perspective to the site, and to benefit from the vast knowledge base that the OPs on this site offer. May I thank you all up front for your assistance and insight. Please feel free to PM me with textile queries, and if at all possible I will be happy to reciprocate.

In terms of low pack volume fabrics - there have been some developments in the structural design of fabrics - but this has been recent - within the past 5 years. The standard F111 type cloths can be made to a lower thickness in processing, and this seems to be gaining ground. Having said that, the Optimum and the ZPX are made from unique raw materials, where only one fabric manufacturer has the rights to the raw materials. I am also doing some research work being to quantify or qualify low bulk fabrics - possibly to attempt to create a definition of such. I believe that a new reserve is due to be launched soon with one of our newer low bulk fabric designs - but I will leave that to the canopy manufacturer to announce when he is ready.