Artificial crimping of wool fibres by draft/relaxation process - Effect of combination with shrinkproofing process.

Abstract

An attempt to render wool fibres an excellent crimp and a high degree of shrink resistance was made by combining a shrinkproofing process with an artificial crimping process developed by us, which consists of two processings: one is a crimp formation by draft-relaxation; while the other a crimp stabilisation by reduction-oxidation of disulphide bonds present in wool. For the shrinkproofing, the chlorination/Hercosett resin process was employed. This work was carried out to know which one of these processes should be, in advance, applied in order to get successful results. It was found that, when the crimping process was applied, in advance, the crimp characteristics and the shrink resistance of wool fibres became much better and the mechanical property of wool fibres remained almost unchanged. These results can be attributed to the fact that the fibre was completely encapsulated by a smooth Hercosett resin film and had high disulphide crosslink densities. In addition, the processing technology established by us was proved to have an advantage that a continuous processing machine can be easily constructed. Wool sliver was obtained by using this machine and the performance of it was demonstrated.