Abstract

Despite all the growth forecasts for the smart textiles market, a stable automated manufacturing process to apply classic electronics to textiles does not exist. Indeed, the large number of manual production steps causes high production costs, which slow down market growth. During the production process, the contacting step offers the greatest potential to reduce manual tasks and lower costs. For this reason, we analyzed different contacting methods for the integration of electronic parts on textiles, which may enable automation during the smart textiles production. In this chapter we focus on ultrasonic-, laserand resistance welding to integrate electronics to textiles.

Keywords: Smart textiles; Wearables, Welding, Bonding, Integration of electronics