Choosing a heating element
Four ways to put heat into a textile assembly, and what separates them in practice: how the element behaves when it is bent, and how it is made.
| Heating element | Material characteristics | Manufacturing process |
|---|---|---|
| Carbon fibre | Brittle, easy breakage | Mostly manual labour |
| Flexible printed circuit board (heating film) | Thin board, easy to snap | Special equipment required, high operating cost |
| Stainless steel fibre | Filament bundle frays easily | Mostly manual labour |
| Conductive Metal Yarn | Coiled design offers both flexibility and strength | Made ready to use on LiTex looms; easily mass manufactured |
Source: 2018-non-carbon-electrical-heating-textile.pdf — LiTex's own comparison, not an independent test
What the table is claiming
The two columns are doing different work. Material characteristics is about what happens under repeated flexing, which is the failure mode that matters in a garment or a seat. Manufacturing process is about whether volume is reachable at all — an element assembled by hand carries its labour cost into every unit.
LiTex's argument for coiled yarn rests on holding both at once: the coil bends without the fracture that affects brittle elements, and it is woven on standard looms rather than assembled, so volume is a matter of loom time. How the coiling actually works →
This comparison is LiTex's, published in its 2018 catalog. It is reproduced here because it is the clearest statement of where the product is positioned — not as an independent benchmark. See the heating textile built from it →