Also known as technical coated textiles or rubber proofed fabrics, coated textiles grant rubber characteristics to a wide variety of fabrics and materials. We produce these materials specifically for a range of industries from marine and aviation to defence. However, the superior safety properties that coated textiles provide enable you to use them in a variety of applications.

Coated textiles are typically manufactured using either the spread coating or calender coating process.

Also known as knife coating, the spread coating process utilises a precision knife over air and knife over roller technique. The fabric is suspended under tension below the blade, which enables us to easily change the thickness of the coating. This enables us to apply solvent based polymer coatings directly onto the fabric from a variety of weights on a single side or two sides of the material.

Once the solvent has fully evaporated it leaves behind a layer of polymer on the fabric. This is then cured in extreme temperatures in specially crafted ovens to vulcanise the coating and fix its final characteristics. In order to achieve the best results, the weave structure of the fabric must be tight and capable of being held taught.

Calender coating utilises a different set of tools to achieve similar results. The process involves passing fabric through a set of heated rollers. These heated rollers serve an important purpose as they singe off any surface fibres which gives the fabric a superior smoothness.

The rubber coating is applied simultaneously as the fabric passes between the rollers. This reduces production time as it enables us to coat both sides at the same time. The thickness of the coating can be changed by adjusting the width of the nip between the rollers.

THE use of coated textiles for protective clothing, shelters, covers, liquid containers, etc., dates back to antiquity. Historically, the earliest recorded use of a coated textile was by the natives of Central and South America, who applied latex to a fabric to render it waterproof. Other materials such as tar, rosin, and wax emulsions have been used over the years to prepare water-resistant fabrics. Due to their vastly superior properties, rubber and other polymeric materials have become the preferred coatings. Today, coated fabrics are essentially polymer-coated textiles. Advances in polymer and textile technologies have led to phenomenal growth in the application of coated fabrics for many diverse end uses. Coated fabrics find an important place among technical textiles and are one of the most important technological processes in modern industry.

Coated textiles are made impermeable to fluids by two processes, coating and laminating. Coating is the process of applying a viscous liquid (fluid) or formulated compound on a textile substrate. Lamination consists of bonding a preprepared polymer film or membrane with one or more textile substrates using adhesives, heat, or pressure. Fibrous materials are also used for reinforcing polymeric materials to form composites for use in tires, conveyor belts, hoses, etc. The scope of this book has been restricted to coated and laminated coated textiles and does not address polymer fiber composites.

Several methods of production are used to manufacture a wide range of coated textiles or laminated fabrics. Broadly, they are spread coating, dip coating, melt coating, and lamination. They not only differ in the processing equipment used, but also in the form of polymeric materials used. Thus, paste or solutions are required for spread coating; solutions are required for dip coating; and solid polymers such as powders, granules, and films are required for melt coating and lamination. The basic stages involved in these processes include feeding the textile material from rolls under tension to a coating or laminating zone, passing the coated textiles through an oven to volatilize the solvents and cure/gel the coating, cooling the fabric, and subsequently winding it up into rolls.

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