Fields of application

Felt materials. The use of glue in felt production.

Felt materials are known for ages. The most recognizable example is the indispensable attribute of Russian national culture –  valenki. The raw material for their production is felt, one the first known felt materials.

Nowadays the range of felt materials is rather wide; there’ re several production technologies.

What are felt materials? These are linen, made of thread-like materials without spinning or weaving.

They are produced both from natural and chemical fibres, secondary raw materials (reused from rags), chemical and other factory waste. In most of the countries felt production became the main textile factory trend, surpassing other sectors of the same branch. There’s also a constant widening in the branches of using these materials both in everyday and technical spheres.

The popularity of felt materials was determined by the following factors:

1.      Compared to the traditional ways of textile factory production (spinning and weaving) felt production differs in simple technology.

2.      The characterisctics of felt materials don’t yield at all, in some cases even exceed the textile characteristics. That’s why they are often used as the substitute for fabrics.

3.      The specific properties of felt materials allow to produce the materials for individual needs with conceptionally new performance attributes which is unavailable in the classic textile production.

4.      Felt materials fields of application are extremely wide. They are:

·        fabric substitutes, which are produced for both everyday and overalls (working clothes). They are used to serve as a warmth-keeping layer in coats, tracksuits and bedding;

·        refractory felt materials are used to serve as a layer in the clothes for firemen and other specialists working in the high temperature conditions;

·        acid protection felt materials are needed to produce the overalls for chemical industry workers;

·        in the field of medicine the felt materials are produced with the task-oriented properties. The sphere of application is wide, starting from the baby diapers and women hygiene stuff to plasters and tooth fillings in dentistry;

·        the felt materials are widely used when producing various filters for liquids, ventilation and air-conditioning equipment, special filters for vacuum-cleaners, carpet manufacture…

·        felt materials are important as raw material to produce furniture, mattrasses, bed linen. Here of the prior importance are such properties as similarity to textile, perfect air permeability, enhanced wearing capasity. Felt materials also find a use in construction and electical indusrty ( in production of nonconducting materials for generators, electromotors, transformators, cabels), and even in gardening;

·        Felt materials open boundless opportunities in designing car stores, they ideally suit interior furnishing;

·        In shoe manufacturing felt materials are used as layings, linings and insoles.

The above mentioned trends of felt material application are not all the possible variants, but their number is increasing every day.

However, every field of using felt materials is connected with the cohesive material technologies. The question of felt material cohesiveness demands individual solution as well as their production and selection according to the particular task.

The specialists of «MELTPACK» company choose the complex solution for a specific task. This task is proved both by the theoretical and practical tests and is usually the most appropriate, modern and productive and makes the work with felt materials several times easier.

For example, «MELTPACK» offers a new gluing (cohesive) technology in felt material production.

Until now two types of glue were used in the mattress production:

1.      The glues on basis of solvents. They are rather cheap, but have such a strong smell, so that it’s only possible to work with them in the respirators. There should be a good exhaust ventilation at the manufacture. After the gluing process which demands additional space the mattrases must be stored for a while, till the smell of the solvents evaporates. Even though there’s exhaust ventilation the inflammation is possible.

2.      The water-based glues are less scented, but it takes more time to store the mattresses and evaporate the water.

Our specialists offer to use the european experience in the Russian production, namely hot-melt glue in the mattress production. The use of hot-melt glue in cohesion felt materials has lots of advantages:

- eologically clean adhesive joint;

-no smell in production and fabric application;

-high adhesive speed (directly after the cohesive process there’s no need for mattresses to be stored and the half-finished products are ready to be moved to the next technological processes);

-the high adhesion with various materials and simple application;

-comparatively easy automation;

- fire safety of production process.

It’s important that the quality of the final product in the use of the modern adhesive technologies is higher than in the traditional ways of adhesion, and its compatitive ability on the market increases respectively. For all that the production price decreases at the expense of production optimisation process.