GB1474047A - Arrangement for producing a resilient mat - Google Patents

Abstract

1474047 Non-woven fabrics; web formation AKZO NV 17 Dec 1974 [18 Dec 1973] 54372/74 Headings D1N and D1R A resilient non-woven mat 10 having both surfaces smooth is produced by extruding polymer through rows of orifices in spinneret 6 situated above a bath of water 28, there being guides 2, 3 fixedly arranged in the bath having smooth surfaces 4, 5 lying in or being tangential at their upper ends to planes which intersect the surface 11 of the bath along straight lines parallel to the surfaces of the mat being produced and to the outer rows of orifices and which are inclined at an angle of 10 to 80‹ to the surface of the bath. The extruded filaments are still tacky when they enter the bath. The mat 10 is withdrawn at a slower speed than the filaments are extruded and hence filament loops are formed. In the embodiment of Fig. 1 the lines of intersection of each plane with the surface of the bath is vertically below an outer row of spinneret orifices. The filaments from these orifices contact polished metal surfaces 4, 5 whilst still soft and hence the loops formed by the deceleration of the filaments are packed together parallel to the surfaces 4, 5, to give a mat with smooth dense autogeneously bonded surfaces. The filaments extruded from the inner rows of orifices are less soft by the time they reach the outer layers formed by the outer rows of orifices. Hence the mat density increases from the inside. In the embodiment of Fig. 2 plates 2, 3 are replaced by triangular cross-section guides 20, 21 whose ridges 12, 13 are no more than 5 mm below the bath surface and parallel to and substantially vertically below the second to eighth row of orifices counting from each outside row. Filaments 14, 17, 15, 18 extruded from orifice rows outside ridges 12, 13 contact the outer surfaces 22, 24 of the guide. The surface layers of the mat are thus of greater density than those produced by plates 2, 3. In the embodiment of Fig. 3, not shown one guide is a flat plate and the other is of triangular cross-section. Plates 2, 3 may be concave and may consist of several narrow surfaces whose edges run parallel to the surface of the bath.