Mechanical Bonding

By
Abu Yousuf M. Anwarul Azim, CSCA, MIEB
BSc Engg (BUTEX), MSc Engg (BUTEX)
azim_te@duet.ac.bd

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1. Needle punching:
• The process of needle punching, also known as needle felting was originally
developed to produce mechanically bonded nonwoven fabrics from fibres that
could not be felted like wool.
• Figure 5.20 illustrates the basic principle of a simple needle loom. The fibres are
mechanically entangled to produce a fabric by reciprocating barbed needles
(felting needles) through a moving batt of fibres in a needleloom.
• Figure 5.21 illustrates the action of the barbed needle. The barbed needles are
clamped into a board which oscillates vertically between two fixed plates
containing the moving batt, each plate being drilled with corresponding holes
through which the needles move.
• A feed system introduces the batt between the lower bed plate and the upper
stripper plate by nip rollers or aprons, whilst a nip roller system draws the
consolidated web away from the needling zone. As the web moves through the
loom, more fibres are progressively entangled by the needle barbs and a
coherent fabric structure is formed.

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• Originally, the products of needling were made from fibres such as
jute, coir, hair, waste and shredded rags to produce carpet underlay,
mattress padding, insulation and rough blankets, the manufacture
being relatively crude and dusty.
• While many of these products are still made using needle punching,
in the last fifty years, and especially since the availability of synthetic
fibres, the process has evolved into a clean, high-speed
manufacturing method of nonwoven production.

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Types of needle and needle selection
• A wide variety of needle types and design configurations are used in
the needle punching industry and there are no well-defined rules
about which type of needle should be used in particular applications.
Needle selection depends upon the desired fabric characteristics, and
fibre linear density is a major deciding factor as well as fibre type and
needle loom type. Figure 5.27 shows a variety of commonly selected
needle types based on the formed barb.
• Triangular blade needles The blade cross-section of classical needles
is triangular, with one of more barbs formed on each apex. Typically,
on standard needles there are three barbs per apex.

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Star blade needles
• The star blade needle has four apices and has a cruciform cross-
section. The needle is therefore intended to carry an increased
number of fibres per penetration as compared to the standard
triangular needle, which can increase fabric strength. The additional
fibre carrying capacity is also intended to increase the production rate
by enabling higher line speed.
• The cross-sectional shape stiffens the needle, which is intended to
reduce needle breakage. The star blade needle is used when fabric
strength has to be maximised in short, high-speed lines or where a
smooth surface is required in the finished fabric at low penetration
depths in finish needling.
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Fork needles
• Fork needles are used for structuring and patterning pre-needled
fabrics. They have no barbs but rather a forked opening at the end of
the needle that is capable of transporting large numbers of fibre as
the needle penetrates. The throat of the needle can be varied to
adjust carrying capacity.
• When the fork is orientated in line with the linear direction of the
fabric a velour surface structure is produced. When the fork opening
is orientated perpendicular to the linear direction of the fabric, a
ribbed or rib-cord structure is produced (Fig. 5.28). Coarser gauge
fork needles are used only in conjunction with lamella bed plates.

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Crown needles
• Crown needles are designed to be used in
conjunction with random velour needlelooms to
introduce fibre loops that protrude from the surface
of the fabric. A crown needle has only three barbs
or openings, one on each apex (Fig. 5.29). These
barbs are equally spaced from the point, normally at
a distance of 3.2 mm. Like forked needles, the barbs
on crown needles are intended to carry large
numbers of fibres to the reverse side of the fabric
for the purpose of structuring the surface of a pre-
needled fabric.
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2. Penetration depth and other factors affecting
needle use/ Influence of Needle conditions on the
needle felt characteristics:
• The vertical distance through which the needle penetrates the batt
during needle punching has a direct influence on fabric properties. The
needle penetration depth is defined as the distance between the upper
surface of the bed plate and the tip of the needle when the needles are
located at bottom dead centre.
• Since the amplitude of the reciprocating needles is constant, the
penetration depth is normally adjusted by raising or lowering the bed
plate. On all looms there is some means of mechanically achieving this,
the settings being indicated by a measuring index on the loom frame, or
by an electronic sensor.
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• The penetration depth is important because it determines the
number of barbs penetrating the batt or fabric on each stroke, and
hence the level of fibre entanglement and bonding that can be
achieved. The barb spacing of the needle is therefore an important
consideration when changing the penetration depth. The penetration
depth also influences the linear speed or advance per stroke of the
needle loom.
• If the penetration is large, the advance per stroke on continuous take-
off machines must be small to avoid the possibility of needle
breakage and drafting of the fabric. To produce a strong fabric while
minimising draft and therefore needle penetration depth, needles
with regular barb spacing may be selected with a shorter distance
from tip to first barb, for example, 3.2 mm instead of 6.4 mm.

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2.1 Punch density
• The punch density defines the number of needle penetrations per
unit area (punches/cm2 ) and directly affects fabric properties and
dimensions. The effects on fabric thickness, volumetric density and
mechanical properties are particularly important.
• Punch density is a function of the fabric throughput speed, the stroke
frequency (punches/min) of the loom and the number of needles per
unit width of the needle board. The punch density may be calculated
as follows:

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Punch density (Cont.)

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Punch density (Cont.)
• Therefore, when the needle board density is constant and for a given
stroke frequency, the punch density is determined by adjusting the
fabric throughput speed (continuous) or indexing distance
(intermittent). To obtain high punch density of a finished fabric
usually requires two or more needle looms.
• Depending upon the scale of production, these passages may take
place as separate operations, or may form a continuous production
line, sometimes with a fabric drafting unit fitted between consecutive
needle looms to minimise the anisotropy of the resultant fabric,
particularly in respect to tensile properties.

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2.2 Barb wear
• One of the principal quality control issues in needlepunching concerns
needle wear, specifically barb wear. As needles engage fibres and slide
against entangled fibres in a needlepunched structure, progressive barb
wear occurs, particularly to the lead barb. This can be quite rapid in high-
density fabrics and when needlepunching fibres such as silica, glass,
stainless steel and aramids, frequent needle changes are required to avoid
batch to batch variations in fabric properties. Ultimately, barb wear affects
the shape and surface features of the barb and changes the needle’s
capacity to hold and release fibres over time. Consequently, barb wear
affects the quality of the needlepunched fabric. It is therefore necessary to
have an understanding of the rate of wear and to take proper action to
prevent the gross deterioration of fabric quality

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2.2 Barb wear (Cont.)
• The rate of barb wear is governed by many factors, including the fibre
type, lubrication and metal to fibre friction, the original barb shape
and kickup, the needle punch density, depth of penetration and fabric
density. The general pattern of barb wear due to needle punching is
illustrated in Fig. 5.30. The back wall and the kick-up of the barb are
the first sections to show signs of wear.
• Gradually the back wall is worn away from its normal angle of 20– 25
degrees depending upon barb type, to near zero degrees. As the
angle is reduced, the fibre-carrying capacity of the barb is also
reduced and without some intervention the quality of the felt will
deteriorate to unacceptable levels.

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2.2 Barb wear (Cont.)
• At angles less than zero degrees, the barb contributes little fibre
entanglement and is reflected in fabric tensile properties. The greatest
wear tends to take place on the barb closest to the tip of the needle and
decreases as the barb distance moves further away from the tip. Therefore,
it is important either to renew the needles or to increase the penetration
depth thereby introducing more of the less worn barbs into the needling
zone.
• However, an increase in penetration depth to introduce new barbs can only
be accomplished if the loom settings and fabric properties allow and
therefore it is not always a practical solution. For example, if the line speed
is high, the increase in needle penetration would increase the dwell time
leading to greater drafting and needle breakage.

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 2.3 Needle rotation
• It is normally not recommended to replace all needles in the board at the
same time but rather to carry out a partial replacement in which needles are
replaced in sections.
• This is because the properties of a fabric made with worn, low-efficiency
needles are markedly different from those produced with new needles. It is
better practice to change only sections of the needle board at any one time.
• To illustrate this, let us assume the lifetime of the needle is thirty million
punches. The needle board can be divided into three sections, the first
section can be changed after ten million punches, the second section
changed after a further ten million punches and the third section changed
after ten million punches.
• In this way, over the total needle lifetime new needles are periodically
introduced or rotated through the board. This procedure has been found to
maximise the uniformity of fabric properties with respect to time.

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2.3 Needle rotation (Cont.)
• In a production situation it is not always easy to calculate the number of
punches since the last needle change, particularly when many different
fibres and batches are processed on the same neede loom. More often
other parameters are monitored and used as a guide such as:
• Linear production (number of metres of fabric produced).
• A significant change in a fabric characteristic is detected: this method is
usually effective when the fabric is made to a narrow specification and
parameters are regularly measured such as a decrease in tensile strength
or an increase in thickness. Clearly, such an approach lends itself to the use
of statistical control techniques.
• Total weight of fibre processed by the machine.
• Running time of the machine.

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2.3 Needle rotation (Cont.)
• The physical wear rate can be found only by direct inspection of the
needle, which of course requires the machine to be stopped.
Periodically, needles should be taken from the board after a
predetermined interval and checked for wear. Using a systematic
approach it is possible to correlate the observed barb wear to
quantitative data obtained for corresponding fabric properties or
dimensions, principally thickness.

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 2.4 Needleboard changeovers
• To save loom downtime it is usual to carry spare needle boards so that
broken needles can be changed or worn needles removed in sections.
• Figure 5.31 shows Asselin A50 technology whereby the needle board is
clamped to the needle beam and held in place by pneumatic bags, enabling
boards to be changed in less than three minutes.
• Conventionally, needles are changed manually in a labour-intensive process,
in which the operator pushes out old needles using a special tool and a
mallet.
• Various attempts to automate this process has been devised using
mechanical means but none has found widespread acceptance because
these systems do not entirely remove the need for labour and their
flexibility is limited.

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2.5 Needle arrangement
• A further quality control issue in needle punching, particularly using boards
with needles arranged in rows, is the presence of needle marks or tracks in
the fabric. Longitudinal, lateral and diagonal tracks may be produced in
needle punched fabrics due to the position and pitch of needles in the
needle board and the advance per stroke. New needle board patterns have
been introduced in an effort to eliminate interference patterns. Tracking in
the MD is normally the result of broken or bent needles.
• The widthwise variations tend to be associated with the needle pitch and
corresponding advance per stroke. In practice, tracking can be difficult to
predict because of drafting or lateral contraction of the fabric during
needle punching. Sometimes, the patterns emerge following a change in
the needle loom settings. Computer simulations are used by machine
makers to visualise the position of needle penetrations in the fabric for a
given combination of conditions and this approach has been used to
optimise the position of needles in needle boards to avoid the introduction
of such tracking defects.
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2. 6 Scrim reinforced fabrics
• For some applications, the modulus and dimensional stability of needle punched
fabrics is increased by the incorporation of a woven fabric or scrim into the
needled fabric. Alternatively, reinforcing yarns may be incorporated in the
machine direction with the cross-laid batt prior to needling. Reinforced needle
felts are particularly common in the production of filter media and papermakers’
felts, as well as historically, in the manufacture of needle punched blankets.
Minimisation of mechanical damage to the scrim by the needle points and barbs
is necessary to prevent a reduction in fabric strength.
• Specifically, the approach angle of the needle barbs with respect to the yarns in
the scrim has to be taken into consideration. Ball point needles with single apex
barbs are produced for paper felt production, where scrim damage is of critical
concern. The stress-strain properties of reinforced needle punched fabrics show
two peaks, one corresponding to the failure of the reinforcing scrim and the other
to the surrounding needle punched fabric. Scrim damage caused by the needles
can seriously affect these tensile properties.
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Structuring needlelooms
• Surface textured needle punched fabrics are produced using structuring
needlelooms.
• Rib fabrics: Preneedled fabrics may be textured to produce a looped pile
using forked needles which transport fibres between lamella strips that
serve as the bedplate (Fig. 5.36 and Fig. 5.37). Such structuring looms are
typically down-punch machines producing rib or velour surface structures
depending on the orientation of the needle fork relative to the incoming
fabric. Patterning is introduced by varying the position of needles in the
board and by controlling the advance per stroke. By lifting and lowering the
lamella table, the height of the fibre pile is adjusted. In certain systems the
needle board position is raised or lowered to enable the pile height to be
adjusted.

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• Velour fabrics: Classical velour fabrics are produced using coarse gauge
fork needles orientated in the correct direction and operating in
conjunction with a lamella bed plate. In the production of random velours,
in place of the lamella bed plate, a continuous, moving brush conveyor is
employed to produce a fine, high density velour finish. The design of the
brush, particularly the density, brush filament diameter, height and
uniformity, influence the appearance and structure of pile surface
produced in the fabric.
• Damage or wear of the brush as a result of needle punching produces
quality problems such as pile height variation and other defects. Fine gauge
fine fork needles and crown needles, sometimes in combination, are
commonly used to manufacture random velour fabrics. The pile is formed
in the brush conveyor and at the same time carried orward until the
finished fabric is drawn out of the brush belt by the takeup rollers.
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• In double random velour systems, more than one needling head is
positioned over a common brush conveyor to give a high pile density, and
possibly to introduce coloured effects by means of yarns or other material.
Such yarns are tacked in to the fabric structure after being introduced from
an overhead creel. An example of a random velour structuring machine (Di-
lour IV) is shown in Fig. 5.38.
• Two needle boards have a backing felt introduced before the second
needling zone. This gives a close pile and added stability to the finished
product. Rib and velour fabrics with large repeat patterns with a patterned
surround or border on all sides can be made on the Fehrer NL11/ Twin-SE
Carpet Star® instead of using two machines in tandem.
• The Carpet Star® operates with two independent needle zones that are
electronically synchronised to maximise pattern flexibility at high speed.
Simulated oriental carpet patterns are claimed to be possible using this
system. In another system known as the Dilo DiLoop RR Rug-Runner,
register control is provided between two looms when complex relief
patterns are produced.
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Stitch bonding:
• Self Study

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Hydroentanglement:
• Self Study

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Reference book:
• Handbook of nonwovens Edited by S. J. Russell

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