Fabric Defects and Fabric Defects Inspection Methods in Apparel Industry
Noor Ahmed Raaz
Faculty Member, Dept. of Textile Engineering,
Atish Dipankar University of Science & Technology
Email: raju.uttara105@gmail.com
Introduction:
The aim of garment inspection is to visually inspect articles at random from a delivery in order to verify their general conformity and appearance with instruction/descriptions and/or samples received. Many readers, asking me to provide information in regard to the fabric defects and the common visual inspection methods for the fabrics. This is my attempt to provide a brief detail in regard to the common fabric defects and inspection methods for checking the fabrics.
I will be covering the following three aspects in this article:
- Common fabric defects
- Fabric defects inspection methods
- Acceptability criteria of the flaws in fabric defects inspection methods.
Fabric Defects:
For the purpose of convenience, fabrics defects can be classified in three main categories as below:
- Woven Fabric Defects
- Knitted Fabric Defects
- Printed Fabric Defects.
A. Woven fabric defects:
- Bull Mark: When a slub or extra piece of yarn is woven into the fabric. This is often removed by a “burling tool”. This will usually leave an open place in the fabric.
- Dropped Pick: Caused by the filling Insertion mechanism on a shuttle less loom not holding the filling yarn, causing the filling to be woven without tension.
- Drawbacks: Caused by excessive loom tension gradually applied by some abnormal restriction. When the restriction is removed, the excess slack is woven into the fabric. Ends are usually broken.
- End Out: Caused by yarn breaking and loom continuing to run. The defect will appear as a thin line.
- Open Reed: Results from a bent reed wire causing warp ends to be held apart, exposing the filling yarn. Will be conspicuous on fabrics that use different colored yarns on warp and shuttle.
- Thin Place: Often caused by the filling yarn breaking and the loom continuing to run until the operator notices the problem
- Jerk-in: Caused by an extra piece of filling being jerked part way into the fabric by the shuttle. The defect will appear at the selvedge.
- Mixed Filling: Caused by bobbin of lightweight yarn or different fiber blend used in filling. Will appear as a distinct shade change.
- Slub: Usually caused by an extra piece of the yarn that is woven into the fabric. It can also be caused by fly waste being spun in yarn in the spinning process.
- Stop Mark: When the loom is stopped, the yarn elongates under tension, when loom starts again, the slack is woven into the fabric.
B. Knitted fabric defects:
- Barre: A noticeable stripes in the direction of the weft-wise. Some of the causes are uneven yarn and uneven tension.
- Birdseye: An unintentional tucked stitch which appear occasionally on the knitted fabric.
- Coarse yarn: A yarn having a large diameter than that normal to the fabric.
- Dropped stitches: When a stitch failing to form because of malfunctioning needle. Fine yarn: A yarn having a smaller diameter than normal to the fabric.
- Misdraw (color): In warp knits, the colored yarns are wrongly drawn through the guide bar which causes the appearance of the fabric different from the designated pattern.
- Missing yarns: A yarn is missing or broken which the machine continuing to run. Needle line: Wales are distorted caused by a bent needle.
- Press-off: A condition in which a knitted fabric fails to knot and as a result, either the fabric falls off the needle or the design of the fabric is completely destroyed.
- Run: A vertical line of unformed stitches caused by damaged needle.
- Tucking defect: One or more unwanted tuck stitches appear on the knitted fabric which are occurred due to the malfunctioning needle or jack.
C. Printed fabric defects:
- Color out: Some printing pattern.
- Color smear: The color smeared out during printing.
- Out of register: The color printed not in a proper position during printing.
- Scrimp: The printing pattern is broken due to fabric creased during printing.
- Snap: During printing, the doctor blade is held from the engraved roller by a hard particle which is lodged under the blade. As a result, the color escapes from both sides of the particle.
Fabric Defects Inspection Methods
Side Seam Check:
After thread sucking then the garments side seam is checked very carefully. If faulty side seams are found, the faulty garment is send to the sewing room. Due to seam pucker or stitch formation, the faulty side seam is occurred in the garments.
Check spot and remove:
When checking the side seam is complete, the garments are checked for spot. If any spot is found in the garments, the spot will remove by chemical using.
Spot name and use remove chemical:
- Oil spot: A.D Max
- Shing spot: G.R.O
- Ink spot, etc.: B.T.S
Ironing/pressing:
After passing through the inspection table, each garment is normally ironed/ pressed to remove unwanted crease and to improve the smoothness, so that the garments looks nice to the customer. Folding of the garment is also done here for poly packing of the garments as per required dimension.
Hang tag attach:
After ironing is done then the sale price or tack packs are attached with the garments.
Inspection:
It is the last stage of inspection the manufactured garments on behalf of the garment manufacturing organization, to detect any defective garments before packing.
Folding:
When the metal free operation is complete then the folding is done.
Packing:
After folding the garments then it’s packed by poly bag.
Cartoning:
After completing the packaging process of garments then cartooning is done.
You may also like:
- Basic Concept of Quality, Quality Control and Inspection in Apparel Industry
- Quality Control Inspection in Garment Industry
- Stages of Inspection in Garment Industry
- Different Types of Fabric Faults and Their Causes and Remedies
- Major Defects in Fabric Find During Fabric Inspection
Founder & Editor of Textile Learner. He is a Textile Consultant, Blogger & Entrepreneur. Mr. Kiron is working as a textile consultant in several local and international companies. He is also a contributor of Wikipedia.