Thursday, April 25, 2013

Bonded Fabric

Bonded fabric is a combined structure of fabric that is being created by joining two set of fabric. This attachment of two fabrics can be made with adhesive or thin bonding fabric with low melting point without any major changes of finished fabric thickness. Here a face or shell fabric is joined with backing fabric. Artificial leather products can be a good example of this type of fabric. Bonded fabric also used in design purposes and fabric stabilization.

An aqueous acrylic adhesive is used for joining bonded fabric. A latex adhesive such as, acrylate, a vinyl chloride or vinyl acetate or thermosetting resin also being used for this purpose. This bonding strength between these two layer fabrics is the main thing where the end uses of the finished product depends on.

Fabric Bonding Procedure:
There are two common methods for attaching fabric to fabric.
1. Wet adhesive method
2. Flame foam method

Wet adhesive method:
· An adhesive liquid is applied to the back of the face fabric.
· Face fabric is set on backing fabric and passed together between the heated rollers.
· Thus, the heat fixes the adhesive between two fabrics and makes the bonded fabric.

Flame foam method:
· Here, a thin layer of polyurethane foam is used to attach two set of fabrics
· First, polyurethane foam is melted a little by passing it over a fire/heat.
· Then this melted foam is set between two layers of fabric just like a sandwich.
· After that, when the foam got dries, it attach the two layers of fabric.

Actually the foam in the bonded fabric is so thin (around 0.010 inch). That why, It doesn’t make any significant changes on the thickness of the finished fabric. By this method fabric may got stiffer than the wet-adhesive method. Sometime foam may appear of the surface of the fabric. That’s why it is not better not to use this method with open-weave fabrics.

Advantages
· This bonded fabric is much cheaper in price
· This fabric is machine washable
· Fabric doesn’t crease easily