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GORE-TEX products for professional use are valued globally for their high quality and durable performance. The design and manufacture of membranes, laminates and seam sealing tapes ensure that technical garments, footwear and gloves have the durability to survive the harshest working conditions and meet or exceed required standards for first responders, technical rescue, firefighters or defense personnel. To certify a product’s functionality over time, rigorous scientific tests are performed in the GORE-TEX labs around the world. Now, for the first time in the brand’s history, visitors can walk virtually 24/7/365 through the company-own test labs physically located in the US and Germany and learn about the different test methods in a 360° view.
Next to the Biophysics Lab, the Environmental Chamber and the Gore Rain Tower, visitors can take a digital tour through the Heat & Flame lab, the Durability Testing & Analysis lab as well as the footwear, gloves and textile labs including the Garment Center. The virtual experience consists of 20 lab rooms and 97 highlighted test apparatus spanning from waterproofness and breathability to flame resistance and comfort science test methods. The virtual labs are accessible through the new GORE-TEX Professional website https://www.goretexprofessional.com/virtual-lab-tour
“We’re excited to educate customers and end-users about how we test GORE-TEX products. Typically, we bring them to our labs in the US and Germany and give them a guided tour. Due to the pandemic situation, physical access to our labs is restricted and so we wanted to bring the labs to our guests virtually. They can now walk virtually from our labs located in Germany to those in the US within seconds, something impossible in real life”, comments Andreas Pollak, Global Marketing Leader, GORE-TEX Professional.
Facts & Figures about the GORE-TEX Virtual lab
20 lab rooms accessible virtually, 97 highlighted test stations
- Footwear Lab: 7 test stations, incl. Footwear Breathability Test, Bottle Test, Wicking Test, Gore Centrifuge Test and Gore Walking Simulator
- Gloves Lab: 8 test stations incl. Liner Retention test, Water Vapour Permeability Test, Whole Glove Breathability and Whole Glove Leak Test
- Textile Lab: 19 test stations incl. Tensile and Tear Testing, IR-Spectrophotometer, Shrinkage Behavior, Weight measurement, Visual Colour Matching, Wicking Test and Oil Repellency Test
- Wet Lab: 5 test stations, incl. Water Repellency Bundesmann Test, Durability Test and Colour Fastness/Washing and Perspiration test
- Garment Center: 8 highlight stations, incl. concept garment, seam sealing, Waterproof vs. Non-waterproof construction, and construction folder
- Rain Room: 2 test stations, style approval and storm cube
- Durability Testing & Analysis Lab: 23 test stations, incl. Exeter Dynamic Shoe Flexibility Tester, Crumple flexer, Testex Circular Locus Tester, I-mass tester, Mace snag tester, Tear resistance Elmendorff, and Multi-finger Scratch tester
- Heat & Flame Lab: 8 test stations, incl. Cone Calorimeter, Pyrolysis Combustion Flow Calorimeter/Microscale Combustion Calorimeter, and Vertical Flame / Folded Flame
- Biophysics Lab: 17 test stations, incl. C-therm, K-Tester, Instron, Handikin, Gore Noise Analyzer (GNA) Kawabata, and Gore Environmental chamber
Gore revolutionized the outerwear industry with waterproof, breathable GORE-TEX fabric 40 years ago and remains a leading innovator of performance apparel. Gore fabrics products provide comfort and protection in challenging environments and in everyday life, enabling wearers to safely and confidently achieve and experience more. From hiking in downpours to military operations and fighting fires, Gore’s deep understanding of consumer and industry needs drives development of products with meaningful performance advantages. https://www.goretexprofessional.com/uk
