Stainless Steel For Textile Industries

02 Dec.,2024

 

Stainless Steel For Textile Industries

1. Durability

Stainless steel is renowned for its durability, which is attributed to its high tensile strength and resistance to impact and fatigue. They withstand harsh conditions without losing their structural integrity, making them suitable for long-term use in challenging environments.

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2. Strength

Stainless steel exhibits excellent mechanical properties, including high tensile and yield strength. This strength-to-weight ratio allows them to support heavy loads and withstand stresses without deformation or failure, making them crucial in structural applications.

3. Versatility

Stainless steel is highly versatile due to its ability to be machined, welded, and formed into various shapes and sizes. They find applications across industries such as construction, automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing, where they serve as structural components, shafts, fasteners, and more.

4. Low Maintenance

One of the major advantages of stainless steel is its low maintenance requirement. It is resistant to staining, corrosion, and rust, minimizing the need for frequent cleaning or protective coatings. This property reduces downtime and operational costs in industrial and commercial settings.

5. Corrosion Resistance

Stainless steel has excellent corrosion resistance due to the presence of chromium. Chromium forms a passive oxide layer on the surface of the steel, which prevents further corrosion and rusting. This makes stainless steel suitable for use in environments where exposure to moisture, chemicals, or other corrosive substances is common.

6. Hygiene and Cleanliness

Stainless steel is easy to clean and maintain, making it highly suitable for applications requiring high levels of cleanliness and hygiene. The smooth surface of stainless steel inhibits bacterial growth and makes it easy to sterilize, which is why they are widely used in industries such as food processing, textiles, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare.

7. Heat Resistance

Stainless steel has good heat resistance properties, allowing it to maintain its structural integrity and mechanical properties even at high temperatures. This makes stainless steel suitable for applications where exposure to high temperatures or rapid temperature changes is expected, such as in industrial furnaces, automotive exhaust systems, and aerospace components.

Stainless steel fibres, yarns and fabrics for technical textiles

Made of fibres, 316L stainless steel becomes soft, extremely flexible, resistant to fatigue and bending, while at the same time achieving special characteristics of thermal resistance (-200°C / +800°C) and electrical conductivity, as well as the special aspect and high density specific to 316L alloy.

Textiles made of stainless steel combine the characteristics of the material (thermal resistance at 800°C, density, weldability, electrical conduction, metallic appearance, shape memory, heating by joule effect...) with the very particular structure of the textile ( softness, elasticity, comfort, functionalisation, flex fatigue resistance, shape mobility...). Stainless steel is transformed into fibres and integrated into the heart of a woven or knitted fabric according to a particular know-how in order to make it functional.

The qualities of stainless steel are well known and appreciated. Amagnetic, austenitic, it offers among other things, by the presence of a high chromium content, an excellent corrosion resistance (better than stainless steel 304). This chromium, present in the alloy, participates in the creation of a self-regenerating passive surface layer, which protects the fibre from corrosion. Molybdenum (Mo) in higher proportions in the alloy than in 304 stainless steel, brings better mechanical performance to 316L stainless steel including in hot and cryogenic conditions. This steel is commonly used in food processing, construction and medical environments thanks to its remarkable chemical stability. The 316L stainless steel fibre is commonly used by IMATTEC for these various applications based on metallic textiles. IMATTEC also uses a wide range of other alloys and metals (copper, nickel, silver, aluminium, stainless steel 304, inconel, hastelloy, fecralloy, titanium...).

Stainless steel : Features & Applications

We mainly use 316L stainless steel in pure or blended with other technical fibres in high temperature (glassware, filtration, etc.) and conductive (smart textiles, filtration, personal protective equipment, etc.) applications. Depending on the application, other grades of stainless steel (304, 304L...), including "super stainless steel" or "super alloys" (inconel, hastelloy, fecralloy, titanium, nickel...) can be used.

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Resistance to high temperatures

In the glass industry, products based on pure stainless steel fibre or mixed with other technical fibres such as PBO Zylon® or aramid (Kevlar®, Twaron®...), are used for conveying and shaping/bending glass plates, or "flat glass" such as car, train or plane windscreens, boat windows, yacht windows or simple windows for example. In this case, the use of knitted, woven or non-woven panels or tubulars is common. For this particular application of glass, also known as "optical glass", the quality requirements of the delivered products are extreme, especially when our customers are active in the luxury car industry for example.

For "hollow glass" such as bottles and flasks, the stainless steel fibres are used to make transfer guides, transfer fingers, push bars, stackers, pushers, quench tapes, conveyor belts, mats, braided gripper linings... which guide and convey the incandescent glass article along its path from the mould to the annealing arch. It is easy to understand the impact of a defect or impurity in the heart of a braid or refractory lining when thousands of malleable bottles come into contact with these guiding systems. A defect is a risk of marking or glazing that will impact, for example, whole pallets of bottles if one does not take care of the quality of the contact products placed on the production lines. This is why we only use virgin fibres and manufacturing lines 100% dedicated to metal fibres to limit any risk of pollution in our products. We have been working hand in hand for nearly 20 years with glass manufacturers, some of which, particularly for luxury bottles, have the highest requirements in terms of both the quality and lifetime. Using a braid, a fabric or a tubular knit, a felt... incorporating IMATTEC stainless steel fibre yarns is the assurance of having both at the same time.

Other examples of high-temperature applications: furnace seals, various gaskets, burners, infrared heaters and radiators, engines, metallurgy, foundry, ...

Possible range of refractory products :

  • fibres / yarns / woven fabrics / knitted fabrics / tapes / belts / braids / non-woven felts...
  • Made of 100% stainless steel
  • Or blended with para aramid (Kevlar®/Twaron®...), meta aramid (Nomex®/Conex®...), PBO Poly(p-phenylene-2,6-benzobisoxazol or polyoxazole (Zylon®), glass, basalt,... or any other refractory fibrous materials.
  • Taylor-made shapes, structures and dimensions are possible
The advantage of IMATTEC

IMATTEC's strength, thanks to its integration and expertise, in possible collaboration with your teams, is to offer you the best material(s), the best fibre, yarn and fabric structure to meet your needs, all with the best service.

Stainless steel in smart textiles (also called e-textiles)

Thanks to its electrical conductivity properties, we also use stainless steel (and other metalsif required) for power or data transmission in textiles, to make sensor wires, or even heating fabrics, flexible RFID chip antennas..., as well as for the production of antistatic fabrics (risk of electric arc or explosion, handling of sensitive electronic parts,...) and electromagnetic shielding (data protection, electro-sensitive people, defence, faraday cage...). Stainless steel is resistant to corrosion which, once integrated into the fabric, is excellent in terms of maintenance and washing performance.

For these applications it is also possible to use metals other than stainless steel, such as silver, copper, aluminium, etc., combined or not with other fibrous materials (aramids, Vectran®, polyester, PBO Zylon®, polypropylene, etc.) in order to modify the mechanical behaviour, lightness, comfort or appearance...

It is possible to obtain yarns with an electrical resistance from less than 1 ohm/m to several Mohm/m. This depends of course on the conductive material used and the cross-sections of the yarns produced.

For composites, stainless steel can also be used as a filler in a polymer or in the textile matrix using fibres, yarns or fabrics.

Other examples of applications for conductive textiles: antistatic filters, heating textiles, sensors (pressure, humidity, voltage, etc.), composites (wind turbine blades, automobile parts, etc.), construction (sensors, dissipation of electrostatic charges, etc.), personal protective equipment (protection against electrical risks, conductive suits, charge dissipation, etc.), fireproof individual protection for high-voltage application made of meta-aramid and stainless steel (gloves, sock fabric, etc.).

Range of solutions for smart textiles
  • fibres / yarns / woven fabrics / knitted fabrics / tapes / belts / braids / cables...
  • Made of 100% stainless steel
  • Or in stainless steel blended with other fibres such as Aramides, polyester (PET), polypropylene (PP), polyamides (PAM), acrylic (PAN), Zylon® (PBO), high modulus polyethylene (UHMWPE-ex. Dyneema®), PVA, wool,...
  • Taylor-made shapes, structures and dimensions are possible
  • other metals, alloy grades and treatments: copper, silver, nickel, aluminium, steels, Hastelloy, Monel, Inconel, Fecralloy, Nimonic, stainless steel 304, titanium, Nitinol...

Please note that depending on the metallic material, some yarns structures, fibres fineness, type of filaments (monofilament, multifilament) will not be available.

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