Foreword
The international economy, accompanied by a marked shift in the political landscape in many areas of the world, is currently undergoing profound change. Not only are a great number of industrialised, recently-industrialised and developing countries affected by these developments but also many manufacturing companies and public utilities. Changes are likewise taking place from the sociological standpoint: due to a constantly increasing world population, resources and jobs are becoming scarcer, the threat to the environment is increasing, more and more people are being excluded from active employment and the number of old people is on the rise.
The consequences – especially in the political sphere – are far-reaching. Within the realms of corporate strategy the process of industrial concentration continues; associations and institutions also follow this trend by combining to form more efficient units. The struggle for market shares, skilled labour and young talent, for greater competitiveness and business survival is becoming harder and harder. The textile industry, in particular, is seriously affected by these developments. Despite increasing productivity in certain sectors, factories and jobs are both victims to these events. The market for textiles now demands an ever quicker supply of merchandise and the more development a company pursues, the greater its need for information on research in the industrial field. As a common objective of theory and practice, the translation of scientific knowledge into new products and production techniques is a necessary prerequisite for the promotion of structural change in small textile companies. Various avenues present themselves for an effective transfer of knowledge, e. g.:
– technology centres,
– trade conferences,
– specialised seminars,
– expert consultancy,
– trade exhibitions with accompanying symposia and, of course,
– publications in technical journals and books.
The rapid progress of technology has meant that complete works on the subject of textile finishing, including its peripheral fields, are either no longer available or out of date, and have become less comprehensible due to continual amendments. Communication problems between theorists and practitioners are an additional factor. Process technology, as the link between theory and practice, represents the optimum means for bringing together theoretical knowledge and practical procedure in order that reproducible and profitable products can be manufactured.
Against this background an encyclopedia has been compiled which provides a comprehensive treatment of textile finishing technology and all its peripheral fields. The underlying concept has been to structure the data and consider different user perspectives, since the Encyclopedia of Textile Finishing is intended to serve the needs of several user groups. Thus, responsibility for locating desired information should not lie with the reader – rather he/she should be guided by the system itself. An information system of this nature offers the textile finisher a wide range of directly usable information on textile technology which, with regard to the amount of dedicated effort and extent of compilation involved, has simply not been available hitherto. The Encyclopedia of Textile Finishing describes common and new terms methodically by means of concise definitions. Keywords of special significance are dealt with in their entirety and treated more extensively in their ecological, process technological and application- oriented contexts, e. g.:
– manufacturing technology,
– products,
– by-product areas,
– energy, mass and information flows,
– human environments,
– complete production lines for textile and clothing manufacture up to waste disposal,
– eco-balances.
The Encyclopedia of Textile Finishing thereby serves to describe the wealth of information involved in the dyeing, printing, finishing and coating of textiles such as clothing, home textiles, industrial textiles, medical textiles and geotextiles. At the same time, particular attention has been paid to the environmental problems peculiar to textile finishing. The German laws and regulations mentioned in this work are exemplary for the worldwide environmental protection. Chemical concepts are explained with the aid of formulae.
Knowledge of textile chemistry is regarded as funda- mental for a clear understanding of textile finishing and, for this reason, knowledge relating to:
– macromolecular chemistry,
– dye chemistry,
– water and tenside chemistry,
– colloid chemistry,
– and physical chemistry has received prominent coverage.
Polymer physics is responsible for shaping the morphological structure of natural and synthetic fibres, and the properties of the fibres themselves are related to their structure. These interrelationships are important to the textile finisher and have received comprehensive treatment.
The processes of diffusion, adsorption and immobilisation are kinetic aspects of all chemical and coloristic modifications to fibres which only seldom proceed to thermodynamic equilibrium. From such considerations, a modern concept of the processing technology involved in textile finishing results which aims to satisfy the quality standards demanded in the application of fibres. Extensive information on the machinery, equipment and installations used in these applications, with typical modern examples, forms the basis of detailed descriptions. Problems of such vital importance as environmental pollution are treated in encyclopedic scope by the Encyclopedia of Textile Finishing.
Since the range of knowledge covered by the encyclopedia extends far beyond the realm of textile finishing per se, and necessarily includes the preceding and succeeding production stages of textile technology, an integral view predominates in many of the definitions. The Encyclopedia of Textile Finishing has been so named because comprehensive knowledge from every specialised area having a bearing on textile finishing has been amassed for the benefit of the textile finisher. The Encyclopedia of Textile Finishing has its origin in the Department of Textile and Clothing Technology of the University of Applied Science, Fachhochschule Niederrhein where teaching is practised by “specialists in the field”. This English version is a translation and update of the German edition published in 1995 by Laumann-Verlag. It is nevertheless not surprising that the Encyclopedia of Textile Finishing represents the culmination of seven years painstaking effort and that it draws on numerous outside publications. Because of the great number of publications involved, it has not been possible to quote this borrowed intellectual property which forms such a substantial part of the encyclopedia. Literature references have been dispensed with entirely, for which we kindly request the understanding of the various authors concerned. Their published work is considered to reflect the latest state of knowledge and, in a few cases, has been acknowledged at the end of a keyword with the postscript “according to XY”. Manufacturer’s and trade names have also been omitted from the text as far as possible. Where, occasionally, it has been necessary to describe individual products (e. g., machines, dyes, etc.), details of the respective manufacturers have been given. Diagrams borrowed from outside publications have likewise been acknowledged according to manufacturer or source.
It is anticipated that the Encyclopedia of Textile Finishing will appeal particularly to:
– plant owners, directors, management,
– factory managers, qualified engineers, technologists, practitioners, foremen, environmental officers,
– chemist-colourists, clothing manufacturers, textile designers, fashion designers, quality inspectors, dry-cleaners,
– students, professors, teachers, lecturers, trainees, research workers,
– buyers, sales personnel, wholesalers,
– personnel in various authorities and ministries,
– machine makers, personnel in supply industries catering to the needs of textile manufacture, representatives of the chemical industry,
– organizers of trade fairs, journalists,
– lawyers, judges and experts in the judiciary,
– consumers, who either enjoy close contact with the end-products of textile finishing, ore use them in a variety of ways as technical or medical textiles.
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To facilitate searching for specific terms and to make cross-references easier to find, an electronic version of the Encyclopedia of Textile Finishing is available on a CD-ROM.
Prof. Dr. Hans-Karl Rouette