If you keep up to date with either our Facebook or Twitter you’ll know that we’ve continuously been posting images from Mitsuru – 326 Power all week. Over the past few days I’ve been trying pretty hard to smash posts from my latest trip to Japan which has made me think more and more about the country itself and what it has to offer. After the World Time Attack in the start of August I will hopefully be planning, if not heading to Japan very soon after that for a month or even longer. My next trip will definitely have 326 Power on my schedule along with the other amazing workshops Hiroshima and the southern region of Japan has on show. I’m not sure if it’s just me but every time I see a photo of a car that 326 Power have blessed it blows me away, literally I will stare at the screen and just swear inside my head (of course in a good way) I’ve seen some amazing cars and sights in Japan and could only imagine what visiting 326 Power would be like. Tracks such as Hiroshima stadium and Sekia Hills will also be a must. It will be a long and expensive trip, but one can dream can’t he?
From left to right: S15, C35 Laurel, GS300, Mazda 929, Infinity & Glorius parked casually out the front of Mitsuru Power in Hiroshima, Japan.
Above is an image taken by my good friend Christopher S Cain who lives in the northern region of New Zealand. Please do yourself a favour and check out his website and blog, I can assure you that you’ll get lost for hours through some amazing film archives from New Zealand & Japan.
As I mentioned in the previous post there were a number of s-chassis at Meihan that had quite an older style of modifying to them. Here is the STP brown PS13 once again sporting 15″ wheels, bolt on fenders and a CA lip and if you haven’t already noticed the oil cooler hanging out of the front grill just like the bosozoku and kaido racers. Yeah this thing isn’t slammed to the ground and isn’t anywhere near hella-flush, in fact it has a huge amount of space between the tire and the guards but that is why I love Japan as there is so many different styles of modifying cars, if everyone had the same mind set there would be no variety and no choice. Thank god for the Japanese and their way of sporting cars.
This particular PS13 from CADDY BROS caught my eye at the Meister Cup with it’s 90’s styling – 15″s, bolt on fenders and standard aero with what appears to be a CA lip. There were a few others with early model styling and even a little touch of NASCAR here and there which I will get around to posting very soon.
This is what’d you expect to find in an AE86 workshop right? Hayashi love. Have a killer weekend everyone. x
There are so many different positives to Japanese drifting however I think this is a major. Picture this. Arriving at a tight, short circuit based in the middle of a forest and hearing the high pitched revving of a carbureted 16V in a little hachi-roku. This was our opening drift day at Motorland Suzuka which is based in Suzuka itself, about 2.5 hours drive from Osaka city. The drivers name is Fumihiko Ogita and is in a team with another two AE86’s which goes by the name of Ise ☆ Works. Check out the feature here.
Looking Levin Coupe. This car is driven by Asayan who is the owner of Looking Japan, it’s driven by a 16V 4-AGE producing 190ps. Both times visiting Japan I’ve come across cars I’ve only ever dreamt of seeing in person. The amount of publications this car has been in and the amount of media it’s seen is very high but that’s not going to stop me posting photos of it. I love the LED taillights.
Flocking on textile: origin, evolution, innovation
June 7th, 2011
Origins of flocking can be traced back to a very remote past. Some sources are speaking about
first applications in China 1000 BC. In more recent time flock curtains dated 1750 are conserved
at Victoria & Albert museum in London.
First industrial use of textile flocking can be found in the USA around 1910. Electrostatic flocking
machines are already described in a USA patent dated 1933. In the patent description we can
find some ideas, which anticipated some of the concepts that, nowadays, are considered very
important in roll to roll flocking lines like the air conditioning system for keeping constant humidity
and temperature.
“The conductivity, at least the surface conductivity, of the fibers is increased by the
sorbed moisture and this alters the rate of distribution of the charges upon the fibers and
the manner in which they are moved and oriented in the electric field. It has been found
that when the relative humidity of the air carrying the fibers is below 40 percent, the fibers
are noticeably slower in depositing and forming a pile. A relative humidty above 45%
percent, on the other hand, tends to cause rapid deposition, but not .in an orderly
manner; treeing and undesirable massing of the fibers result.”
After this, many patents followed on the story of flocking equipment some of them with real
innovations that entered into the technical standards of flocking machines manufacturers.
In America flock started to be more and more used on several sectors, finally in Europe flock
started to be a textile finishing system in the 50’s.
Aigle started producing flocking machines initially only via mechanical flock sieving systems;
through R&D investments, the company was able to develop and produce an electrostatic
generator that allowed AIGLE to achieve reliability and high performance, all in a relative low
weight machine. This happened in the mid of the 60’. Main applications were decorations for
curtains and women polyamide stockings. In these and following years machinery market
demand was really high: customer were paying additional money for each week the
manufacturer, Aigle in our case, managed to anticipate the delivery of the machine
(unfortunately these time are really passed). Get the best deals from this professional Spectro flock manufacturer.
Evolution of flock, adhesive and flocking process technology allowed the use of flock on textile
not only for decoration but also for functional use like crushed velvet for garments, sofa covering
and car sits covering. Then the higher precision cut of the tow in the flock manufacturing process
was allowing better results in terms of quality of the flock pile. On the other side adhesive
originally were not breathable as a conventional fabric is. Upholstery cushions could not easily
release air and stayed puffed up like a balloon. Reformulating flock adhesives, by air injection
just before application, allowed for breathability. Formulators created ways to maintain physical
properties, while allowing air to pass through the flocked fabric. In this way it was achieved
another great improvement: to maintain the flock fabric washability as far as resistance to
washing chemicals.
These important improvements combined with better machine’s quality brought a higher speed
and a better quality production. Also diversified finishing technology of the flocked fabric highly
improved the possible use of flocked fabric especially in garments
One of the more famous and popular finishing systems were the so called “Pig”: a viscose flock
fabric passed through a special foulard and an open tumbler that became very popular for
garments and interlining fabric; on another hand, finishing of nylon flocked fabrics was mainly
obtained by air embossing and by traditional printing system, giving a large variety of designs
and special effects, particularly appreciated for upholstery application.
At the end of the ’90, flock manufacturers started to offer on the market more sophisticated fibres
so-called microfibres that were capable to give to the finished textile a better hand in terms of
softness touch.
Speed of flocking textile process in Europe was reaching around 15 mt/m’, in the US up to
double; the reason of the speed gap stays in the technology: D.C. electrostatic system used in
Europe is much safer and is giving a more vertical results on the dipping of the millions of fibres
on the adhesive but above a certain speed defects are very evident: in this way the velvet effect
was higher with softer touch. On the other hand, USA A.C. electrostatic system is more
dangerous due to higher power necessary, but is allowing higher speed due to the extremely low
defect problem in presence of higher pile. Softening of the fabric is obtained by special finishing
treatment of the flocked fabric. Other important sector of textile flocking is design flocking: in this
case adhesive is coated by rotary screen, and the flocking machine is be fixed on the printing
machine structure.
Flocking machine is equipped with a very efficient suction system, in order to keep clean the
environment.
Out of all the Skylines I personally feel the R33 always seems to have the most hate. This particular one caught my eye and I think this type of style works wonders for the shape. Huge bodykit with large dished wheels such as these Work VSKF’s. This car was spotted at our first day at Meihan long with another 80 or so cars sitting in the pits, it was one of the very few R33’s in the field.
As I’m heading away over the weekend here is my final post for the week, we will be back on Sunday afternoon. Due to people frothing so much over the Team Magician R32 on the Facebook Page I thought it would be ideal to share some extra love with a desktop. I feel now days whenever you think of a pink drift car you immediately think of Team Burst or Nakamura so let’s bring back Team Magician.
Here you are, have a fun and safe weekend everyone. Download 1920×1200
Out of any other month this year this will be my busiest yet. Throughout June the remainder of my Japanese content will arise to the surface with more car features and drift days such as the Wreck `Em day at Meihan featuring Team Burst, Origin, Jesse Streeter, Supermade and many more. Also this month I will be giving you plenty of workshop tours throughout the Kansai region such as: Auto Select, Trial, Supermade and Jenesis to name a few. One more thing I’d like to kick off this month would be my behind the scenes articles from my recent trip with K-Tours, this will go through our day to day schedule over the two week period. Be sure to check out what else we have in store for this month here. For now, enjoy this photo of the R32 GT-R from Trial.