Types of non-woven fabric and manufacturing processes
Nonwoven fabric is a material that resembles cloth and is composed of long, continuous fibers and short, staple fibers that have been joined by heat, solvent treatment, mechanical means, or chemical means. In the textile manufacturing sector, the phrase is used to describe materials that are neither woven or knitted, such as felt.
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Overview of several non-woven fabric kinds
Based on various production techniques, there are eight categories into which non-woven textiles can be classified:
1. Spunlace nonwovens
It is a nonwoven fabric that is directly made from polymer slices, short fibers, or filaments that are woven into a network of fibers using mechanical or air force, spunlace, acupuncture, or hot-rolled reinforcement. Finally, the nonwoven fabric is formed once the spunlace process is complete.
Uses: It is well recognized for its excellent performance in face mask, medical, wet wipe, and non-woven filter fabrics, among other applications.
2. Nonwoven textiles with heat bonding
The primary methods used to create this kind of non-woven fabric include adding sticky or fibrous reinforcement material to the fiber network and then heating and chilling the network to strengthen the cloth.
3. Air-laid pulp nonwovens
Another name for air-laid nonwovens is dustless paper nonwovens or dry paper nonwovens. The wood pulp fiberboard is first opened up into a single fiber state using the air-laid technique. Next, the fiber agglomerates on the net curtain using the airflow method, and finally the fiber web is combined into fabric.
4. Wet-laid non-woven fabric
Wet nonwoven fabric is made by opening the fibrous raw material in the aqueous medium into single fibers. In the meantime, various fiber raw materials are mixed to form a fibrous suspension slurry, which is then transported to a mesh-forming mechanism where the fibers are laid in a wet state to form a cloth.
Spunbond nonwovens are number five.
The procedure for creating spunbond nonwoven fabric involves stretching and extruding polymer to create a continuous filament, laying the filament into a web, and then using their own bonding, thermal bonding, chemical bonding, or mechanical reinforcing techniques to turn the web into nonwoven fabric.
Meltblown nonwovens are number six.
Melt-blown nonwoven fabric is created by blowing the resulting web onto a collector screen, where it forms fine-filtered, self-bond nonwovens. The melted polymer fiber is extruded through a linear die with several hundred tiny holes to create long, thin fibers that are stretched and cooled by hot air as they fall from the linear die. This kind of nonwoven fabric is typically used to create SM or SMS webs by adding it to spunbond.
Acupuncture nonwovens number seven
One kind of dry nonwoven fabric is acupuncture nonwoven. A needle puncture reinforces the fluffy fiber into the fabric.
8. Stitch nonwovens together.
Another kind of dry nonwoven cloth is stitched nonwoven. In order to create a nonwoven fabric, the production method employs a warp knitted loop structure to support the yarn layer, fiber web, nonwoven materials (such plastic sheeting, plastic foil, and so forth), or a combination of these.
Production procedure:
Felt can be produced by machine or by hand. The following describes felt manufacture via machine. Two carding procedures are performed on the fiber in quick succession, resulting in a fine web with parallel fibers of uniform thickness.
The web is constructed in many layers until it reaches a suitable thickness or weight. After that, the edges are trimmed to the appropriate width and the bulk, or batt, (layer of web), is cut. The batts typically measure 37 meters in length, 150 to 230 centimeters in width, and weigh between 8 and 23 kilograms.
After uniformly dousing the batts in warm water and passing them over a steam box to properly warm the textiles, they are pressed between two rollers.
The top roller is positioned above the batt and uses an oscillating motion to provide pressure, which when coupled with heat and moisture, results in the ultimate felting process. After that, they are left to drain and chill for around a full day.