TECHNOLOGIES
WEB FORMING AN BONDING
Spunbond
A spunlaid technology in which the filaments have been extruded, drawn and laid on a moving screen to form a web. The term is often interchanged with “spunlaid”, but the industry had conventionally adopted the spunbond or spunbonded term to denote a specific web forming process. This is to differentiate this web forming process from the other two forms of the spunlaid web forming, which are melt blown and flashspinning.
WEB FORMING AN BONDING
Meltblowing
A nonwoven web forming process that extrudes and draws molten polymer resins with heated, high velocity air to form fine filaments that are deposited onto a moving screen. In some ways the process is similar to the spunbond process, but melt blown fibers are much finer and generally measured in microns. Melt blowing is a spunlaid process. The term is also spelled “meltblowing”.
WEB FORMING AN BONDING
Spunlace
The method of bonding a web by interlocking and entangling the fibers about each other with high velocity streams of water (synonymous with Hydroentangling). The web or fabric may have other bonding methods in addition to spunlacing. Spunlacing, not to be confused with spunlaid, is generally produced from a web made up of staple fibers from a dry formed, carded system, but small quantities of spunlace bonding are done on production lines that use a wet laid forming process. A recent technical development is the production of a spunlaced nonwoven from a spunlaid, continuous filament web.
WEB FORMING AN BONDING
Through Air Bonding
A bonding system that that uses high temperature air to fuse the web’s fibers. There are two basic systems: blowing hot air through the web in a conveyor oven or passing heated air through the web on a rotating drum (illustrated below). Fabrics made from bicomponent fibers or blends of bicomponent and regular fiber are often bonded by through-air bonding systems. This method is sometimes referred to as air-through bonding.
