Two major methods for non-woven fabrics manufacturing

Non-woven fabric has broad applications in important industrial markets such as hygiene, medical and filtration. There are two major technologies in the manufacturing of non-woven fabrics: Spunbonded and melt-blown.

melt-blown

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the melt blowing process

The schematic diagram shows the basic concept how the non-woven fabric is made. More details can be found the in the link.

Spunbonded

Figure 2. Schematic diagram of the spunbonded process (reference)

Melt-Blown non-wovens have finer and short fibers than that of the spun bonded ones. Therefore, melt blown non-wovens primarily are adopted for the hygiene, filtration and industrial segments, while spun bonded non-wovens are for the market of hygiene cover stock, medical fabrics, geotextiles, construction and carpet underlays.

With the difference said, in lots of cases melt-blown and spun-bonded non-wovens are used together, e.g. SMS (spunbonded/melt-blown/spunbonded), SMMS, through either integrating individual fabrics together, or manufacture the multilayer products by the following methods, for example. (reference)

Figure 3. The manufacturing process for multi-layer SMS products

Reference/Source: Journal of Textile and Apparel Technology and Management, V6, Issue 3, Spring 2010