Resin reaches the line as pellets, and the people who run it call them chips, especially for polyester, which must be dried before extrusion or it loses strength through hydrolysis. Chips are conveyed from silos or boxes to dryers and extruder hoppers, often with color or additive masterbatch blended in. Wet, dusty or mixed chips are a common root cause of breaks and drips.
PET chips only sat in the dryer three hours, so expect filament breaks until the moisture comes down.
Also heard as
- pellets
- resin
- polymer chips
Related terms
PP
Polypropylene: the most widely used polymer in nonwovens, especially spunbond and meltblown fabrics.
Melt flow rate
Grams of molten polymer pushed through a standard die in 10 minutes, the basic measure of how easily a resin flows.
Drip
Lump of polymer that falls from a spinneret or die and lands in the web as a hard, often glassy spot.
Repro
Polymer recovered from trim, start-up waste and off-spec fabric, repelletized and fed back to the extruders.