Recently developed by CSIRO for quality control and assurance of fabrics, FAST, or fabric assurance by simple testing, consists of a series of instruments that are in expensive, robust, and simple to use, and their related test methods. FAST is specifically designed for use by tailors and worsted finishers; it measures fabric properties that are closely related to the ease of garment making-up and the durability of worsted finishing. FAST- I gives a direct reading of fabric thickness over a range of loads with micrometer resolution. FAST-2 measures the fabric bending length and its bending rigidity. FAST- 3 measures fabric extensibility at low loads. Fabric shear rigidity is calculated from the 45° bias extensibility. FAST-4 is a quick test for measuring fabric dimensional stability, including both relaxation shrinkage and hygral expansion.
The heat and mass transfer model developed in Part I has been further modified to evaluate the steaming of blended and interleaved fabric-wrapper assemblies. Various conditions relating to the batch decatizing of a wool fabric with a cotton, nylon, or polyester wrapper have been examined. Results of the computations show that cotton wrappers produce a constant and uniform increase in the regain of wool fabric, but a high fabric temperature may result when steaming a low-regain assembly. With nylon or polyester wrappers, fabric regain increases significantly with steaming time, while fabric temperature remains close to the steaming temperature. The effects of initial temperature, moisture content, and wrapper fiber type on the wool fabric are greater at higher wrapper-to-fabric weight ratios.
The development of devices for the rapid estimation of fiber diameter distribution characteristics has highlighted a requirement for techniques for equally rapid test specimen preparation. This has led to the development of &dquo;minicoring&dquo; and &dquo;snippeting&dquo; techniques to replace the microtome described in the standard IWTO procedure [2]. The use of a microtome involved compressing assemblies of fibers with a tongue-ingroove arrangement of metal plates, then trimming protruding fibers on both sides of the plates. A metal pusher was then used to extrude the fiber plug a chosen distance (0.4-0.8 mm), after which it was trimmed flush with the surface of the plates to provide the test specimen of snippets. Such microtome methods are too slow for the CSIRO fiber fineness distribution analyzer (FFDA) [4]. In addition the FFDA and certain more sophisticated techniques using image processing require longer snippets. In the case of random fiber assemblies, minicoring techniques [1] have been developed and used extensively under commercial testing conditions. For parallel assemblies, the development of twin bladed devices [3] has enabled the rapid production of large numbers of specimens for the FFDA. The &dquo;twin guillotine&dquo; uses the scissor principle of cutting and requires a precise orientation of the cutting blades and regular sharpening of the cutting edges. The device, although able to produce excellent test specimens, is quite costly.Buckenham et al.[ I ] developed a more rapid device.After samples were loaded into the air-driven apparatus, snippets were automatically cut and cleared into containers. The device operated well on greasy wool staples in which snippets were held together by the grease, but was less satisfactory for tops. This was because of problems of contamination of specimens with long fibers, which can cause blockages in the FFDA, as well as cross contamination of test specimens. With the FFDA in mind the following requirements for a snippet preparer were considered desirable: low cost manufacture, low cost maintenance, simple to use, snippet length 1-2 mm, absence of long fibers, and no cross contamination of test specimens. The snippet preparer is shown in Figure 1.The plates (A), the thickness of which determines the snippet length, form a slot 3 mm wide in this example. Blades (B) are affixed to the faces of the plates to provide cutting edges and a short tunnel. Two pushers (C and D) and a collection phial are the only other essential components. FIGURE 1. A fiber snippets prep8m.Bundles of aligned fibers are introduced into the slot and allowed to rest against the edges of the cutting blades. The phial is located below the blade tunnel. The pusher C, without a tongue, is then located between the posts and pushed down onto the fiber bundle, causing the fibers to be cut and the resulting snippets pushed into the tunnel. The H configuration of the push rod provides location for this movement. Contact of the top part of the pusher with the plates stops the lower surface of ...
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