TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 954/2010
by I Jones and A Brun
Background
In clothing manufacturing an interliner is used between the liner and outer fabric particularly in jackets to provide shaping, form, feel and stiffness in certain parts of the garment. Different combinations of fabric layers are used in regions such as the shoulder, lapels and front to give different appearances and feel. The interliner fabrics are attached to the outer fabric using a fusing technique. The bonding of an interlining to an outer textile fabric is currently carried out using hot fusing by means of an adhesive, previously applied to the interlining, which is melted under certain conditions of temperature, time and pressure. A new automated method was required that could be more flexible for customisation of the interliner attachment from suit to suit and also to provide the possibility of giving different stiffness in different areas of the same fabric. Other parts of the suit will use automated sewing and the whole process will be integrated into a prototype manufacturing system. This provides a vision for future development of the European garment making industry.
This work has been carried out as part of the Leapfrog Project (Leadership for European Apparel Production from Research along Original Guidelines). Leapfrog is a joint research and innovation initiative of the European textile and clothing industry, led by Euratex, aiming at a technology breakthrough in the clothing industry. It brings together a critical mass of European textile and clothing companies and research centres which will attempt to develop and implement new ways of optimal fabric preparation for clothing production, automated garment manufacture, virtual garment prototyping, supply chain integration and mass customisation. The ultimate goal is to achieve a step change in productivity and competitiveness of Europe's clothing sector and decrease its dependence on the labour cost factor.
To demonstrate the manufacturing developments, equipment to make men's suit jackets is being built and tested. TWI's role in the project, and the work described in this report deals with specification, building and testing of the equipment and development of bonding procedures for interliner attachment.
Objectives
- Find a suitable method of attaching synthetic fabrics to natural fabrics.
- Design, specify, construct and test equipment to automatically join the interliner layer to the outer layer for a men's jacket.