Textile Fibers 2009934114
HumpCh02ff.qxd 1/19/08 7:00 PM Page 13 SECTION TWO Textile Fibers 2009934114 Fabric Reference, Fourth Edition, by Mary Humphries. Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc. HumpCh02ff.qxd 1/19/08 7:00 PM Page 14 2-1 WHAT IS A FIBER? not make fabrics from slivers! Textile fibers are also very thin—long in relation to diameter. To be mechan- Fibers Are Fundamental ically spun into yarn—drawn out and twisted—staple fibers must have sufficient length, strength, and cohe- Most basic of all in selecting fabrics is the behavior of siveness (fiber-to-fiber friction). Many seed fibers are the fibers, the smallest visible components of most too short, weak, and slippery to spin into yarn; kapok, fabrics. for instance, can be used only for stuffing. The two main divisions in textile fibers are Of course, for a fiber to be used a great deal, there natural and manufactured (see Figure 2.1). Nat- must be a reasonable supply and price. ural fibers are those found in nature already usable to make fabrics. The two main sources are plants (with the fibers called cellulosic from the main What’s in a Name? Fiber Generic Names building material, cellulose), and animals (with the fibers called protein from the main building mate- Fibers are classified into groups, each of which is rial). Manufactured (MF) fibers (formerly termed given a generic name or “generic.” For natural “man-made”) are formed from a suitable raw mate- fibers, this generic is the name of the plant (cotton) or rial as a thick, sticky liquid, which is “spun” or animal (camel) from which the fiber comes, or an extruded through spinneret holes, forming streams accepted name, such as wool or mohair.
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