Investigation of direct welding of organza textile and PET mesh for designing free-form lighting

Organza textiles exhibit a wide variety of colors, excellent flexibility, and good light transmittance. Accordingly, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) organza textile is a promising candidate for use as a lighting material with diverse and intricate geometries. However, organza cannot be used alone owing to its extremely low stiffness as a lighting material. In this study, a PET mesh was employed to enhance the stiffness of organza textiles. Organza textiles and PET mesh were directly welded by thermal welding at different welding temperatures of 320, 375, 425, and 480 °C. A tensile shear test of the organza-PET mesh lap joint was conducted to evaluate the joint strength. Stronger joint strengths were achieved with increasing welding temperature, as severe entanglement developed between the organza textile and the PET mesh at higher welding temperatures. Transmittance and color combination tests were performed with varying numbers and colors of organza textiles. The transmittance decreased as the number of organza textiles increased. Moreover, multiple new colors were generated by combining two different organza textiles. These results demonstrate that the organza-PET mesh joint can serve as a lighting material with free-form geometry, owing to its good mechanical strength, controllable transmittance, and broad color spectrum.