After two and a half years of development and intensive testing on various boats up to 58 feet in size, Elvstrøm Sails is launching a new manufacturing process for membrane sails called Xylo, which is based on the company's own Epex technology. This involves five-centimetre-wide filament strips that are individually laid out by machine in various load directions according to the sail designer's specifications and joined together under vacuum. The technically complex manufacturing process produces several layers that cover all load angles.
Many thin fibres form a high-performance cloth
The filaments are ultra-thin parallel fibres, and various materials can be used here. The first is Technora Black, a black, high-strength aramid fibre comparable to Kevlar. Like other membranes, the cloth is produced by the sailmaker and does not come from an external manufacturer. Elvstrøm manufactures the sails two-dimensionally in large panels, the profiling is created conventionally by broadseeming, i.e. by darting. For the mainsail of a 40-footer, for example, four panels are produced consisting of five layers of filament.
Outer layers of likewise very thin tafetta protect the material. According to Elvstrøm, the result should be a homogeneously shaped sail with a very high profile over a long service life. The profile retention should be longer for the same weight compared to a Technora-Epex sail. A Xylo sail is around twice as expensive as one made of polyester (Dacron) and is around 20 per cent more expensive than an Epex product. Xylo is currently suitable for upwind sails up to a boat size of around 75 feet.
