Injector heads fitted with jet strips spray columnar water jets at pressures from roughly 30 to 250 bar or more onto a web carried on a perforated drum or belt. The jets wrap and knot fibers around one another, giving a soft, drapeable fabric with no binder, which is then dewatered and dried. Hydroentangling bonds carded, airlaid, wetlaid and spunlaid webs and can also pattern or aperture them.
Hydroentangling pressure on the last injector is up to 180 bar and we're still not getting the MD strength.
Water quality is half the process: poor filtration plugs jet strips, and bacteria in the water loop can make finished wipes fail micro tests.
Also heard as
- hydroentanglement
- spunlacing
- water-jet bonding
- hydro
Related terms
Spunlace
Fabric bonded by hydroentangling, and the usual trade name for the whole process family.
Strip
Line name for the thin perforated metal jet strip that forms the water jets in a hydroentangling injector.
Jet streaks
Lines running in the machine direction of a spunlace fabric, caused by blocked or damaged water jets.
Splittable fiber
Bicomponent fiber built to split into much finer microfibers after it has been laid into a web.