Introduction: When we buy clothes, we often ask whether the clothes I buy are made of wool or cotton? After reading this article, you can become half a textile expert.
Classification of raw materials
Textile fibers are generally divided into natural fibers and chemical fibers. Natural fibers include animal fibers and plant fibers. Wool, silk, etc. are animal fibers, while cotton, hemp, etc. are plant fibers. Chemical fibers are divided into regenerated fibers and synthetic fibers. Such as soybean fiber, viscose fiber, etc., are all regenerated fibers. Polyester, nylon, acrylic, polypropylene, vinylon, spandex, etc. are synthetic fibers.
Characteristics of commonly used raw materials
Cotton: The advantages of cotton are softness and comfort, bright and rich colors, heat resistance, strong water absorption and good breathability; the disadvantages are Easy to wrinkle, needs to be ironed, easy to dye, easy to mold, and has poor acid resistance.
Wool: The advantages of wool are that it is warm, light, and does not feel wet when worn, soft and comfortable, rich in color, and does not fade easily when exposed to water. ; The disadvantage is that it is difficult to handle with water, cannot be machine washed, needs to be dried flat, is easily deformed, and has strong shrinkage.
Silk: The advantages of silk are that the threads are slender, smooth and soft, wear-resistant and stretch-resistant, elastic, and able to absorb sweat and moisture excreted by the human body; the disadvantage is that it is not resistant to sunlight and washing.
Linen: The advantage of linen is that it is more absorbent and cool to wear; the disadvantage is that it wrinkles easily, the fabric is rough, and it does not have a smooth texture when worn.
Viscose fiber: Viscose is commonly known as rayon. Its advantages are strong hygroscopicity, good dyeability, and comfortable wearing. Its disadvantages are poor elasticity, poor strength and wear resistance in the wet state, so viscose is not durable. Washable, poor dimensional stability.
Nylon: The advantages of nylon are low density, light fabric, good wear resistance and high elastic recovery rate; the disadvantage is that the sunlight resistance is not good, the fabric will turn yellow and the strength will decrease when exposed to the sun for a long time. The fabric is prone to snagging, pilling after prolonged wear, and low dye fastness.
Polyester: The advantage of polyester is that it has high breaking strength and good elasticity. The woven fabric has the best wrinkle resistance. After being shaped at high temperature, it has stable dimensions, good shape retention and wrinkle resistance, and it does not wrinkle after washing. ; The disadvantage is that ordinary polyester filaments have poor hygroscopicity, but modified hollow or heterosexual polyester varieties can have good physical hygroscopicity.
Raw material specifications and expression methods
Filament yarns are generally expressed in Tex and Denier; short fibers are generally expressed in imperial count and metric count. Due to the irregular shapes of fiber filaments and yarns and the hairiness on the surface of the yarn, we cannot use diameter to express its fineness, so we generally use Tekes and Daniel to express it.
Raw material identification
The raw material identification methods include: contact method, combustion method and drug coloring method. Since there are many modified fibers and composite fibers on the market, it is easy to be confused in terms of feel and difficult to distinguish. In addition, the drug coloring method has too high requirements for identification conditions. Therefore, the burning method is introduced. This method is convenient, fast and has immediate results.
When burning, we can judge based on the five dimensions of fiber being close to the flame, in the flame, after leaving the flame, smell, and residue form. For example, the five dimensions corresponding to cotton burning are: neither melting nor shrinking, rapid burning, continued burning, burning paper smell, and delicate grayish white; while the five dimensions corresponding to wool burning are: shrinkage, gradual burning, not easy to spread, and hair loss after singeing. Odor, crispy black ash; when polyester burns: shrinks and melts, melts and burns, continues to burn, special smell, hard lumps.
