What is Textile Testing?

It is the application of scientific principals to measure fibers, yarn and fabrics properties using specialized equipments under standard testing conditions and procedures. or The measurement of characteristics and properties of textile materials to predict their end use performance.

Purpose of Textile Testing

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2. 3. 4.

For Quality Control in textile Industries e.g checking Raw materials,Monitoring Production, Assessment of final product. For the Comparison of Market and competitors products. For Product development and evaluation. To Develop care and cleaning procedures for a product.

5- To ensure compliance with labeling regulations.

6-. To promote a product. 7. To ensure consumer satisfaction. 8. To ensure textile products meet their specialized need. 9. For Forensic laboratories to reproduce action on textile products as evidence.

What is Quality Control??

Quality Control system is to control the quality. This is like a postmortem work as after each operation or process we have to measure whether the process done is satisfactory or not? Where as Quality Assurance is taking proactive steps to get the desired results. In any good dye house Quality Control and Quality Assurance systems should go hand in hand. The knowledge of QC operations should lead to the formation of good QA system.

Objectives of Quality Control:

To produce required quality product. To fulfill the customer's demand. To reduce the production cost. To reduce wastage. To earn maximum profit at minimum cost.

Advantages of Laboratory Tests 1. 2. They are rapid. Most tests can be completed within a day. A numerical result or rating allows one fabric to be ranked as being better or worse than another fabric even when the differences between them are small. The tests are under the direct control of the tester. This allows the conditions of test to be exactly specified and factors other than those under test to be kept constant. They can be reproduced. An identical test carried out on the same fabric should ideally give the same result in any laboratory and with any operator.

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Disadvantages of Laboratory Tests

Laboratory tests can only imitate wear conditions For a complete evaluation of a fabric it is necessary to use a large range of expensive.equipment. Speeding up a test may give false results, for example the continuous action of abrasion tests may cause heating of the material which is not present in normal use.

Types of Textile Testing:

Textile testing can be divided into following Categories: 1. Physical Tests: Strength,Pilling, Shrinkage, Bursting,GSM,Count & Construction etc 2- Color fastness Tests:Washing,Light, Rubbing, Sea water,Perspiration etc. 3- Water Repellency Tests: Spray Tests, Rain Test etc 4Fiber Composition: Identification & Blend Ratio 5Color Evaluation: CMC Color difference,Depth of shades, Whiteness etc 6- Chemical Testing: pH,Starch Content,Formaldehyde content, Analysis of all dyes,Auxiliaries and Finishes etc.

Services/Tests Offered by Textile Laboratory PCSIR Labs.Karachi.

Construction Analysis: Count: (Woven) (Knitted)s Count with Desizing Ends/Pick Wales & Course Weight of Fabric (G.S.M) Fabric Width Skew ness Bow/ After washing or After Calendaring Types of Weave Thickness of Fabric

Fiber composition:
Fiber Analysis: (Binary Mix) (Addition)
Dyestuff Identification

Strength:
Tensile Strength / Elongation Bursting Seam : Slippage Strength Tear:
Tenacity (RKM) Single Yarn Strength

Shrinkage: Dimensional Change (Washing) : Three wash Five wash

Dimensional Change (Dry-cleaning)

Color Difference by Data color SF 650+ CMC Color Difference Color Strength Color Coordination CIE Whiteness Berger Whiteness

Washing: ISO-1O5-CO1-C10) Perspiration Crocking Organic Solvent (Rubbing) Water Light Fastness (MBTL) 50 hours 100 hours 130 hrs.

Physical Tests

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Light Fastness (Xenon) 20FU 40FU 80FU 100FU Chlorinated Water Sea Water Dry-cleaning Non Chlorine Peroxide bleach Chlorine Water Spotting Acid Spotting

Air Permeability Pilling (100 cycles) Abrasion (5000 cycles) / each addition Water Repellency (Spray Rating) Rain Test Soil Release Oil Repellency Absorbency Crease Recovery

Alkali Spotting Hot Pressing

Chemical testing:
Azo Dyes Identification Hazardous Metal Formaldehyde Alkalinity in wet processing PH of fabric/Chemicals. Starch content Analysis of Chemicals/Auxiliaries use in Textile wet processing. Analysis of Textile finishes. Analysis of Raw Materials.

Martindale Pilling and Abrasion:

Pilling is a condition that arises in wear due to the formation of little 'pills of entangled fiber clinging to the fabric surface giving it an unsightly appearance. Pills are formed by a rubbing action by Martindale machine with 9 k pa or 12 k Pa Weight and specified No of cycles according to clients requirement. A Lissajous figure is used to perform one cycle. A cycle consists of the 16 movements in the Lissajous figure. After Pilling we match the treated cloth with Reference photographs for of type SM 50 (For orthogonal fabrics) and SM 54 for knitted fabrics.Also Change in shade and appearance is observed. In case of Abrasion we run the machine till one yarn breakage will occur.

Color Fastness Test to Light The purpose of Color fastness to light test i s to determine how much the color will fade when exposed to a known light source for specified time i.e 24hours to 72 hours or by customer/buyer demand. We can also evaluate UV Absorbers efficiency on textile by this. To measure the color fastness a blue scale is used. After completing the test,sample is compared with the blue scale under D-65 Lamp. .

Perspirometer/Perspiration Fastness Tester

Perspirometer In order to determine the color fastness of dyed or printed fabrics against perspiration Perspirometer is used. Fabric samples are exposed to the action of both alkaline and acidic reagents while in contact with un dyed adjacent fabrics or Multibifer is placed between plastic plates under a fixed load about 5 kg inside an oven maintained at 37 centigrade for 4 hrs.

Multifiber DW Type 1-Secondary Cellulose Acetate, 2-Cotton 3-Polyamide 4-Polyester 5-Acrylic 6-Wool.

Fabric Strength Tester

The strength of a fabric gives us an idea how much load we can apply on it. The strength of a fabric varies with EPI (Ends er Inch), PPI(Picks per inch), and Count Variation. The strength of the fabric also varies if the length and width of the fabric to be tested is changed. The strength of the fabric also depends on the construction of the fabric. A plain fabric is stronger than a twill fabric if made from yarn of same count. If we take a sample which size i s 3inch6inch and another sample size 2inch6inch then the strength of the first sample will be greater than the second one. It means as we increase the length of the sample then strength of the sample will be decreased.

GSM Cutter
GSM means grams per square meter of a knit, woven or non woven fabric. It is essential to know weight of the fabric before manufacturing and after getting the finished fabric.
Working Procedure of GSM Cutter: Taking the sample of fabric from bulk and conditioning for 4.30 to 06 hours Taking the conditioned fabric for test on the G.S.M.cutter pad so that no crease or wrinkle is formed. Cutting the fabric with G.S.M. cutter (GSM Cutter Diameter 11.2 cm) Taking the weight of the cut fabric in balance and multiply with 100. Get the GSM of the fabric in oz/yard.

Chemical test: Fiber identification

The identification of textile fibers is a task frequently performed in a textile laboratory. Basically three procedures are introduced, involving 1)burning, 2)Solubility 3) dye staining tests of the fibers. These experiments will enable the reader to identifying various textile fibers using simple techniques.

Fiber identification by burning: Procedure: Obtain 12 cm lengths or tufts of the various fibers or yarns to be tested
from the samples provided. 1. Hold the individual fiber samples to be tested in tweezers or tongs and bring the fibers slowly to the side of a Bunsen burner flame. Make observations. What is the initial reaction? Does the fiber shrink? Melt? Anything else? 2. Place the fiber in the flame and slowly withdraw it. Does the fiber burn? 3. If burning occurs, describe the flame. Color? Sooty? 4. Does burning continue or is fiber self-extinguishing? 5. If burning continues, extinguish it and carefully smell the smoke. Describe the smell. 6. Observe the remains of the ash (burn) product. Color? Black? Pale brown? Does it crumble? Is it hard? Bead-like?

Fiber identification by solubility To examine the reaction of fibers to solvents and to use these observations to identify fibers. Background: In the burning test, natural fibers like cellulose and wool could be distinguished from the synthetic fibers (nylon, polyester, acrylic) fairly well. Among these synthetic fibers there is some confusion using the burning test. Since fibers are polymeric materials they can react with solvents in different ways. Thermoplastic fibers may dissolve in a common solvent like acetone. Also some highly semi-crystalline (thermoplastic) fibers like nylon and polyester will dissolve only in harsh solvents like formic acid or boiling dimethyl form amide (DMF).