Durable Press Finishing of Cotton Drill Using Transfer-Pad-Cure Technique

Abstract

A cotton drill fabric of 348 g/m2 was finished with DMDHEU from anti-crease to durable press level using a shock-cure technique employing a loop transfer pad with resultant low wet pickup of 40% and an active mixed catalyst system. A con ventional pad-dry-cure (PDC) treatment was also used. Evaluation of fabrics finished by the transfer-pad-cure (TPC) and PDC techniques shows that TPC leads to higher fixed N2% with better performance in resilience properties. A comparison of the two techniques using a performance profile chart reveals that the TPC technique shows better performance at lower levels of improvement in resilience, and it narrows down as the resilience approaches the durable press level. This is attributed to the slightly swollen state of DMDHEU crosslinked fibers obtained with the TPC technique.