Abstract:
Synthetic polymer fabrics are normally heat set to
improve the dimensional stability. In the recent past garment
finishing processes that involve heat has increased, where already
heat set synthetic materials are subjected to another heat
application. Most of these processes applied on cut fabric panels
as the placement of the application such as a print or a heat seal
label is well defined with tight tolerances. This heat application
leads to shrink and reduce the size of the garment panel though
these fabrics have already been heat set. Different garment
panels shrink in different amounts, hence adding a fixed a heat
shrinkage allowance will not ensure the dimensions of the
finished garment. This research is to investigate the effect of cut
panel dimensions and the previous heat set temperature on the
shrinkage at the post heat applications on garment panels.
100% polyester plain knitted fabrics were heat set and the
thermal shrinkage of fabric panels were measured after post heat
application.
The results revealed that the heat setting temperature and panel
dimensions are significant predictors of wale-wise thermal
shrinkage while the effect of cut panel layout is negligible.
