Producing Non Wooven Printing
Nonwoven fabrics have become an extremely important segment of the textile industry in recent years. The technical developments in polymers, nonwoven processing and fabric finishing have led to significant improvements in fabric physical and mechanical properties including fabric handling and drapability, tensile properties, abrasion resistance, pilling and washing stability, dyeing and printing that create prospects for nonwoven fabric applications in particular in apparel outerwear. This chapter briefly discusses the various nonwoven fabric production processes including web formation, web consolidation and finishing. An introduction to different joining techniques is also discussed and at the end future trends in the non woven market are outlined.
Nonwoven fabrics which are strongly bonded tend to be stiff and often bear more similarities to paper than to conventional woven fabrics. The non-woven fabric may be composed of natural or synthetic fibres in the form of either continuous filaments or staples, or combinations of the two. In order to obtain softer non-woven fabrics which more closely resemble woven fabrics, non-woven, ‘point-bonded’ fabrics have been developed, using processes which limit bonding to spaced, discrete areas or points. It has been found that most point-bonded non-woven fabrics, particularly those with a large number of tack bonds, and many overall bonded non-woven fabrics can be significantly softened by subjecting the fabric to mechanical stress.
The phrase ‘softenable, bonded, non-woven fabric’ denotes a non-woven fabric which is autogenously and/or adhesively bonded, and which can be significantly softened by subjecting the fabric to one or more washings in conventional domestic washing machines, or to physical stress such as stretching, twisting or crumpling. It is believed that such non-woven fabrics contain a substantial number of bonds weak enough to be broken by such washing or stress, without breaking the bonded fibres.