Mst.

Sharmin Aktar
Lecturer
Dept: Leather Engineering
Mechanical operation prior to ILET, DU

post tanning operation

Mechanical processes after tannage
Samming
The content of water existing in the leather as a result of tanning, even after intermediate storing,
is too high for a subsequent treatment of thickness by shaving, chrome splitting or setting out and
should be reduced. This is done by treating the leathers on samming machines.
Sammying is dewatering of leather (e.g.wet-blue, retanned leather) mechanically by pressure as
part of wet end operation.
Formerly hydraulic samming presses were used. These had the disadvantage of producing inverted
pleats and an uneven draining effect. The modern rotating samming machines consist of a striking
out roller for prevention of inverted pleats and two feed rollers, each having a loosely fitted milled
felt sleeve. As a result of increasing rationalization efforts, through-feed samming machines have
been in use for some years.
Objectives:
 Bring the moisture content of the leather into suitable range of working condition. If the
leather is too wet/dump/or too soft/less resilient/,it will be dragged and torn by cylinder of
the shaving machine/the subsequent operation/.On the other hand, if it is too dry/hard or
horny/,it will not be pliable enough to lie snuggly against the guiding bolster of the shaving
machine and also be difficult to wet back.
 Slightly reduce the water content of wet blue and reduce the weight and transportation
costs, especially if the product is to be sold at this process stage.

Shaving
Serves to determine the final thickness of the leather. Formerly this was done manually by means
of a shaving knife, today it is performed mechanically on a shaving machine. The leather is fed to
a sharp-edged blade-cylinder by means of a pressure roller and shaved to the set thickness. In
contrast to splitting, the firmness of the leather is not substantially reduced. The machines have
web widths of 300-800 mm. The modern broad shaving machines can accommodate widths of up
to 3200 mm such that whole hides can be shaved over their entire width in a single operation.
Shaving of leather, as one of the wet end operations, is simply considered as the removal of flesh
and loosely attached structures such as adipose tissue remains as well as thickness adjustment into
a salable from according to the would be leather type and the customer demand.
Objectives:
 To bring the leather to a uniform thickness throughout the skin area in a precise manner
(and with greater accuracy than can be obtained by splitting operation) as commercial
leather should be of uniform thickness.
 To remove the loosely attached tissues and fibers that reduce the aesthetic appeal of the
flesh side leather and to remove flesh offal remains, if any.
 To intensify surface dyeing by exposing the inner fiber especially for suede

Splitting
Band knife splitting machines are used for splitting thick hides over their entire surface into upper
split (grain split) and lower split (flesh split). Thereby the firmness of the leather is reduced,
however area is gained by the second split. Compared to the splitting of limed pelts, the splitting
of chrome-tanned leathers shows the following advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages:
 Saving of manpower
 Exact thickness of split
 Faster through-feed
 Continuous work process without change of drum
Disadvantages
 More strongly wrinkled grain
 Stronger neck folds
 Slight loss of area
 Higher consumption of material since the lower split is tanned as well

Working principle of samming, splitting and shaving machine