By Speciality Fibres and Materials Ltd
With a modern card and needle loom located in a Class 8 clean room SFM have enviable pilot plant facilities. Our capabilities range from making non-woven fabrics from a small amount of fibres to material for stability and other pivotal studies. With unparalleled experience in non-woven fabric manufacture, SFM have the ability to add together multiple layers of fabric such as scrims to improve strength, antimicrobial layers, activated charcoal to capture and to blend together fibres with different properties to produce non-woven fabrics with unique properties tailored to your requirements. SFM have recently added an ultrasonic spray line to enhance the ability to functionalise wound dressings and fabrics. With this capability installed it is possible to coat fabrics with a vast array of additives to provide new performance benefits. Using our pilot scale multi filament wet spinning line, the R&D team at SFM can develop fibre concepts on a scale suitable for proof of concept studies. This has been used by SFM and by customers to investigate the feasibility or performance of fibres and non-woven fabrics on a small scale before committing to expensive large scale trials or equipment modifications. The equipment has been recently used to investigate blending polymers to produce a co-spun fibre, understanding the effect of processing parameters on fibre and fabric performance and how residual polymers, processing aids and cleaning fluids interact with each other before plant trials take place. SFM Pilot facilities include - Automatex card and cross folder - TecTex needle loom - Multifilament wet spinning - Multifilament melt spinning - Ultrasonic spray line - Chemical conversion of fibres - Fibre coating and treatment
