Blister podcast has a couple of pretty interesting interviews with product managers for GoreTex and TNF Futurelight. Kudos to Sam Shaheen for trying to cut through BS and get some real technical details from these guys. Consumers who spend $500+ on a hardhsell deserve to know those details. Here are my takes from listening to both:
1. There is almost zero real membrane innovation at Gore, they keep tweak the same membrane and even hinted about going back to EPFTE-PU layered membrane. They emphasize durability, but that's as much of a symptom of not being able to compete on breathability so much. The interesting thing is of course the Gore with stretch, or the newer stretch GoreTex. I was curious how they could make a non-stretching membrane such as EPFTE stretch, and turns out that they essentially crincle it by laminating to a stretched sheet of elastase and then allowing it to contract. To me that laminate has internal stress built in and should be inherently prone to delamination, which I will see because my wife just got a stretch Gore jacket for this season. Probably this is why they replaced that fabric this season with the new stretch that is only a two-way stretch, which is lighter and probably not as stressed at the boundaries. time will tell. The Gore guy was annoyingly not willing to tell anything at all, despite Sam asking fairly direct materials questions.
2. Futurelight is the big news, and the TNF guy was much more forthcoming. Bottom line is that Futurelight is nothing more than a highly optimized NeoShell. The membrane seems to be the same, electrospun PU nanofibers, but TNF is doing it in house ( I suppose a patent lock on NeoShell has expired?). The resulting membrane has much better air permeability than EPTFE. TNF claims that they were able to dial in the combination of shell fabric, membrane and backer to achieve a proper balance of air permeability, moisture transfer, and water column resistance. Sounds very ambitious, but also not out of this world. The real questions are of course how that membrane behaves under stress in wet conditions, think your underarms rubbing the torso in the rain. Even the best DWR wears off and then it is about the shell fabric retaining water and the membrane itself being able to resist penetration, TNF says that when they first tested it, there was no way back. I’d does remind me the first day of skiing in a NeoShell jacket, there was no going back. That FlyLo jacket is pretty beat up now, but I still use it on good day and fall back on my Gore Arcteryx only on storms days. Anyone can sell me a new NorthFace Brigandine Futurelight jacket at a decent discount? I will report on A/B with Arcteryx;-).