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Robert Gore has died
- animationwill 6y ago>> Among its varied applications, Gore-Tex is used in medical devices including heart patches, guitar strings, space suits, and vacuum bags. I have always considered GoreTex to be one of those simple-but-brilliant inventions. Tiny pores to prevent water droplets, but still breathable, but I had no idea it was also used in medical devices or space!
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- revx 6y agoThe more I hear about Gore-Tex, (and PTFE and PFOA, the chemicals Gore-tex and other Teflon stuff is created from) the more I think this is one of those chemicals that we'll look back on in 50 years like we now look at leaded gasoline. Besides being known as deadly to parrots, I think studies (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28913736/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28913736/) are starting to reveal that there are risks with PTFE and PFOA that need more research. I try not to be alarmist about chemicals and am generally in favor of scientific progress, but this chemical (similarly to PCBs) seems like one of those "wonder materials" that's great for specific applications that turns out to be terrible for life and the environment as soon as people sit down and actually look at the effects over a long period of time.
- hansvs 6y agoWell that just messed with my head. For some reason (advertising? confusion? stupidity?) I had thought that Gore-Tex was based on a special weaving technique and use of special acrylic fibres... Wikipedia says `It is composed of stretched polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which is more commonly known by the generic trademark Teflon.` Damn....
- specialist 6y agoYa, I felt truly stupid once I realized Gore-Tex is Teflon. REI is gonna need a makeover once this catches on. Since learning about micro plastics from fabrics polluting our waterways, I'm keen to find alternatives. I had an Australian style rain coat (dense weave, regularly reapply wax) as a kid. I couldn't find anything comparable locally. Meanwhile, I got one of those fisherman jackets. I sweat so much, the only benefit I get is wind protection.
- hvs 6y agoWaxed canvas is used a lot for woodworking aprons. I'd look for a waxed canvas rain coat.
- jowiar 6y agoBarbour is probably the most well-known waxed canvas jacket. They’re great, especially in areas where rain comes suddenly.
- cnasc 6y ago> (dense weave, regularly reapply wax) Barbour?
- Bayart 6y agoOr Belstaff. Even Aigle makes pretty good waxed jackets on occasion. But one of the best materials for rain is still... wool.
- tokamak-teapot 6y agoI have had several wool coats and none of them have been at all rain repellent. I’ve also worn many pure wool jumpers and hats in the rain, again none of them holding off anything more than the lightest drizzle. What sort of wool is good for keeping off the rain? Edit: Wearing (only) a damp wool jumper is fine if you’re up a mountain and it’s not too windy or freezing cold, but I’d still prefer to be dry!
- bbarn 6y agoEverything will kill you, in sufficient quantities. The question is whether its use outweighs the risks, and I'd venture to say PTFE if called upon to settle accounts has done the world more good than harm.
- comicjk 6y agoThat's likely true now, but we have a problem if the harm (pollution) accumulates each year and doesn't go away. Eventually it may exceed the good.
- andrewem 6y agoSee for example the small town of Hoosick Falls, New York where PFOA poisoned the water supply. Many sources, but here's one https://pfasproject.com/hoosick-falls-new-york/ https://pfasproject.com/hoosick-falls-new-york/
- hobofan 6y agoAlso in Parkersburg, where the resulting long legal battle was portrayed in the movie Dark Waters last year. Another great addition to the genre of "Mark Ruffalo investigative thrillers".
- refurb 6y agoPFOA I can understand, but PTFE? Sure, it's toxic to parrots, if you burn the material and it decomposes. But how many materials aren't? Most plastic will produce highly toxic products when burned. PTFE is produced from tetra-fluoroethylene, which is a gas, doesn't get into water supplies. And PTFE is very non-toxic. That's why we use it in medical implants.
- jjoonathan 6y agoYeah, but they don't buy commercials with happy bongo music and stir FUD about their competition, so how good can it be?
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- nsajko 6y agoAre you referring to DuPont when you say "they"? I'd assume there would be many producers since PTFE is an old invention (~1940).
- jjoonathan 6y agoI'm referring to the entire chemical industry. This thread is chock full of people saying "Teflon = Bad" when it was manufacturing safety and (maybe) the practice of ignoring warnings and grilling with teflon pans that were bad. It's an amazing material and it would be a shame to see it memed out of existence. This kind of thing has happened before. If we (USA) hadn't stopped rolling out nuclear in the 80s, we'd be off coal/gas by now, instead of maybe several decades from now after pumping ungodly amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Anti-vax and anti-fluoride need no introduction. Agrotech probably receives the most hate per unit of actual sin -- it's an odd week that I don't hear someone patting themselves on the back for choosing a product that is almost certain to be worse for the environment because an upscale vendor successfully applied misleading differentiation tactics to convince them of the opposite. Indiscriminately attacking progress and throwing the baby out with the bathwater has become a national passtime that shows every indication of getting worse before it gets better. Teflon seems to be another instance of this trend.
- paulcole 6y agoIf you could snap your fingers and erase the environmental impact Goretex has had on the world, it would be the environmental equivalent of squishing a single ant. Yes, you did something but that something was ultimately pointless on a global scale. If you’re not an alarmist, don’t wring your hands over Goretex. It is nothing like leaded gasoline. The modern world is the blight on the environment. We just like it too much to ever change. We’d rather think Goretex or not separating glass from plastic or using/not using canvas shopping bags (depending on how contrarian you’re feeling) is the culprit. But really it’s us and how we like to live. We should enjoy this ride while it lasts.
- hexbinencoded 6y agoYep, the science is in. Lead, asbestos, DDT, PCBs, and PTFE/PFOS/PFOA. 3M Scotchgard (spray-on water-repellent for materials) was mostly PFOS, now it's PFBS. Hipora, OTOH, is silicon-based. SympaTex is polyester-based. On another note: I felt extremely stupid paying $300 for a Columbia Elite running rain jacket with Gore-Tex, with a lifetime warranty and bought from their store in Seattle, that subsequently disintegrated into god-knows-what and they wouldn't honor it. Never again: Gore-Tex or Columbia. Comparison table of water-resistance and breathability of water-resistant fabrics: https://www.sierra.com/lp2/waterproof-guide/ https://www.sierra.com/lp2/waterproof-guide/
- junon 6y agoAs a parrot owner, this is true. It's a huge scare in the community because it's one of those facts not well known by even moderately-experienced/-researched owners. It's almost a guaranteed kill to a parrot when heated. Very dangerous stuff.
- aaron695 6y ago> Besides being known as deadly to parrots Everything we know about this is anecdotal. But it seems true. It's not hard to put a pan in a lab with a bird and see what happens. But no one will it seems. Science is going backwards, we just sit around eating Kentucky Fried Chicken talking about how ethical we are. And other than the fact we should never use anecdotal evidence when it's so easy to check, we also have no idea what temperatures it happens at or how bad it really is. So it's hard to know if this is just crazy talk or something real.
- IgorPartola 6y agoIf you want to see Gore-Tex in action, this is a fantastic demo: https://youtu.be/dtCdQfbLw7o https://youtu.be/dtCdQfbLw7o. Their other videos are very entertaining also.
- bsimpson 6y agoFortNine is the gold standard of review videos.
- mrguyorama 6y agoI've never owned a motorcycle but their content is incredible
- afterburner 6y agoHmm. His rig stretches the fabrics he's testing, when they're not meant to be stretched aggressively like that in normal use.
- chrisseaton 6y agoBut that’s what he’s testing - what happens when you sit on a wet seat or kneel on wet ground or have your feet pushed into wet boots. That’s what you need GoreTex for. It’s a stress test. They’re already trivially waterproof when just sitting there that’s obvious so no need to test it.
- afterburner 6y agoBut the rig he made was meant to simulate the actual test of having a long thin tube of water sitting over a tiny section of the fabric. It introduces a lot more widespread stretching than the real test would, inflating the fabric like a balloon (not just simply applying pressure). I bet this affects the water resistance of the fabrics quite a lot, beyond what you'd normally apply to it. Do you stretch your knee fabric like a balloon when you apply pressure onto it to the ground? Did appreciate the breathability test though.
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- dirtyid 6y agoTIL gortex generics is just teflon. Always avoided gortex products because they seem to insist on very visible branding, but guess I've owned gortex products all my life.
- kag0 6y agoThe very visible branding is because a) they work very closely with the products that get to use goretex, and they guarantee those products. So if I buy a Marmot rain jacket with goretex and I have a problem with it, I can go to goretex and they'll replace it. That's a pretty strong guarantee that consumers want to see very visibly. and b) they market hard to convince consumers that if it's not goretex, it won't be breathable. A bunch of competitors (outdry, event, neoshell, etc) popped up a few years ago and lots of companies switched to them from goretex, but goretex has since reeled them back in and now we see most companies using only goretex again.
- projektfu 6y agoI’d disagree that goretex is teflon. They have the same chemical formula but are clearly different. PTFE is used in laboratory glassware and would be neither gore-tex nor teflon.
- cobalt 6y agoPTFE is used in like a gazillion things
- drno123 6y agoRobert Gore was not the first to discover ePTFE (Gore Tex) material, but the prior inventor kept his invention as a trade secret. Robert Gore has defended his patent against original inventor, won, and then sued anyone who has uses equipment made by the original inventor.
- cma 6y agoHow was that possible since that was before first-to-file?
- wtallis 6y agoThe Wikipedia article for Gore-Tex has two citations about this, one of which is available online: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/721/721.F2d.1540.83-614.83-613.html https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/721/721.F2d... A key paragraph from that ruling: > Early public disclosure is a linchpin of the patent system. As between a prior inventor who benefits from a process by selling its product but suppresses, conceals, or otherwise keeps the process from the public, and a later inventor who promptly files a patent application from which the public will gain a disclosure of the process, the law favors the latter. See Horwath v. Lee, 564 F.2d 948, 195 USPQ 701 (CCPA 1977). The district court therefore erred as a matter of law in applying the statute and in its determination that Budd's secret use of the Cropper machine and sale of tape rendered all process claims of the '566 patent invalid under Sec. 102(b). It looks like there's an important distinction between patenting Gore-Tex the product, and patenting a process for manufacturing Gore-Tex.
- matkoniecz 6y agoNice to see patent system working as intended.
- nateburke 6y agoRIP. Next to "Intel Inside", I can't think of a more successful secondary brand in the consumer goods world.
- jkestner 6y agoThe most notable thing about WL Gore is that they have a flat management structure. Everyone’s title is ‘associate’ in a way that’d be laughable at Walmart, they rank each other to distribute compensation, and they own the company. https://www.managementexchange.com/story/innovation-democracy-wl-gores-original-management-model https://www.managementexchange.com/story/innovation-democrac... https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1984/04/30/gores-secret-is-lattice-structure/930b340c-ab46-4a74-ab24-cf7bfcf452b1/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1984/04/30/g...
- racl101 6y agoIt's Goh-tex!
- davidbanham 6y agoI heavily favour goretex gear even when the item doesn’t really need to be waterproof. More than the membrane, I respect gear with the goretex label because of the durability standards they enforce on manufacturers using their product. I know that this piece has been independently tested and it will last me well for years before needing replacement.
- projektfu 6y agoDang, why drop the identifier “Gore-Tex?” Who cares about some guy they can’t identify except through their work?
- jedberg 6y agoI had the same question. I saw this headline this morning and thought, "oh wow the creator of Gortex died". The headline as it is means nothing if you don't know that random trivia. The fact that he invented Gortex was pretty critical to this headline.
- ab_testing 6y agohttps://youtu.be/lt6KRKHpKhY https://youtu.be/lt6KRKHpKhY