Abstract
In conventional manufacturing of flocking fabric, filament fibers are weigh-treduced, dyed, and cut to staple fibers of a certain length. Subsequently, these short flocking fibers, or piles, are flocked on a substrate. However, many weight-reduced and dyed flocking fibers are discarded because of inaccurate length during the cutting process. To overcome this inefficiency problem, a modified flocking process was proposed, in which the filament fibers are cut before the flocking fibers are weight-reduced, dyed, and flocked. In this study, the weight-reduction behavior and dyeing properties of split-type PET flocking microfibers produced by the modified flocking process were investigated. It was found that the weight-reduction ratio of the flocking fibers depends on temperature, time, and the concentration of sodium hydroxide solution used in the alkali treatment. The optimum treatment conditions (whereby the weight-reduction ratio reached a theoretically defined value) could be chosen, and the split flocking microfibers could be monitored by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis. When the flocking microfibers were dyed with seven disperse dyes, the adsorption or dyeing rates of the low- and medium-energy-type disperse dyes were faster than those of the high-energy-type disperse dyes. The high-energy-type disperse dyes exhibited good color yield, which suggested that their build-up properties were good. The wash fastness was moderate to good, and the light fastness was fair to moderate; however, the rubbing fastness was very poor.
