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Forget all that fiddling around with sewing machine and thread—British
scientists have welded a shirt together with a laser. Paul Hilton and his
colleagues at the Welding Institute in Cambridge made the shirt from panels of
viscose and polyester fabric. To weld two panels together, they coat the edges
with a dye that absorbs infrared light and lay one edge over the other. Firing a
low-power infrared laser at the fabric heats the dye and melts the fabric
slightly, forming a join. “The seams are probably stronger than you’d need to
satisfy the Army,” says Hilton. The technique, reported…