Textile industry

Dynamics, process reliability and stability are the prerequisites that machines and systems must fulfil within the textile industry. In the textile sector, GFH laser micro machines are primarily used for laser drilling of spinnerets.

Spinnerets are mainly round or square plates made of glass, metal or ceramics with many and equally sized nozzle openings. These divide the amount of spinning mass delivered by the spinning pump with equal pressure and time into fine spinning solutions. Right after these spinning solutions are solidified into filaments with subsequent chemical and physical treatment methods. During melt spinning the thickness of the nozzle plates lies between 8 and 25 mm. Because of the lower inlet pressure during the spinning of spinning solutions the thickness lies between 0.8 and 2 mm. The materials for spinnerets have to be adapted to the process conditions of the spinning process. For the wet spinning process with a temperature of 90 °C following materials come into question: gold, nickel, iridium, tantalum or glass and for the dry spinning process with temperatures of 350 °C stainless steel is used. The number of holes and thus the individual filaments produced per nozzle is between 1 (monofilament) and 250,000 (multifilament). Most of the time the cross sections of the nozzle holes are circular but there are also many different profiles. The cross-sectional shape of the nozzle hole determines the cross-section of the filaments. The flow rate and the diameter of the drilled hole affect their fineness. The cross-sectional shape and the fineness have a significant influence on the processing and performance characteristics of the filaments and the resulting spin fibres. The hole diameter for round holes is between 0.03 and 1 mm. The flexibility of the bore shape allows the production of new fibre geometries that are optimized for the specific application. A greater stability and consistency of the fibre is achieved, thus reducing production costs and increasing efficiency.