POLYESTER SPIN FINISH

Several types of spin finishes are available. There are only few spin finish manufacturers - Takemoto, Matsumoto, Kao from Japan, Henkel, Schill &Scheilacher, Zimmer & Schwarz and Hoechst from Germany and George A.Goulston from USA. It is only by a mill trial that the effectiveness of a spin finish can be established.A spin finish is supposed to give high fibre to fibre friction of 0.4 to 0.45, so as to control fibre movement particularly at selvedges , low fibre-metal friction of 0.2 to 0.15 to enable lower tensions in ring spinning and provide adequate static protection at whatever speed the textile machine are running and provide enough cohesion to control fly and lapping tendencies and lubrication to enable smoother drafting.Spin finish as used normally consists of 2 components - one that gives lubrication / cohesion and other that gives static protection. Each of these components have upto 18 different components to give desired properties plus anti fungus, antibacterial anti foaming and stabilisers.Most fibre producers offer 2 levels of spin finishes. Lower level finish for cotton blends and 100% polyester processing and the higher level finish for viscose blend. The reason being that viscose has a tendecy to rob polyester of its finish. However in most of the mills even lower spin finish works better for low production levels and if the production level is high, high level spin finish is required if it is mixed with viscose.For OE spinning where rotor speeds are around 55000 to 60000 rpm standard spin finish is ok, but if a mill has new OE spinning machines having rotors running @80000 rpm, then a totally different spin finish which has a significantly lower fibre - fibre and fibre - metal friction gave very good results. The need to clean rotors was extended from 8 hours to 24 hours and breaks dropped to 1/3rd.In conclusion it must be stated that though the amount of spin finish on the fibre is only in the range 0.105 to 0.160, it decides the fate of the fibre as the runnability of the fibre is controlled by spin finish, so it is the most important component of the fibre.