Stentering Nonwovens

Bernd Can, Sales Manager, Bruckner Textile Technologies (Germany) explained how their expertise in building heat setting machinery for textiles could be used to improve the performance of spunbond nonwovens, especially for geotextiles.  The key benefits of heat-setting spunbonds on a stenter rather than calendering were:

·    Ability to vary basis weight up or down by controlled shrinkage or       stretching in either or both of the MD and CD directions.

·         Increased strength.

·         Better MD/CD balance.

·         Improved resilience.

·         Better control of bico melting.

·         Contactless heating system: no melting on hot surfaces, no cleaning.

·         Fabric widths infinitely adjustable up to the machine width (i.e. up to 7m)

Temperature variations in the hot air ovens were minimised by Vent-Jet gas/air mixing technology and alternating up/down draught zones along the length of the oven.  This “Counter Air Flow” reduced temperature variations down to +/- 1% compared with +/-5% in a conventional stenter.

Bruckner was also able to provide belt systems for bonding high loft webs up to 30mm thick.  These belt systems could fuse ADL fabrics at 200m/min and dry spunlace fabrics at up to 500m/min.  They could also apply treatments to and dry SMS fabrics, but all these belt systems required more floor space than the current machinery.


(from EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)