ABSTRACT
After textile materials have been made, by being spun into yarn or woven into fabric, they still contain impurities which make them undesirable for immediate use. Such textiles-usually referred to as ‘grey goods’—are unattractive to consumers because of their appearance, handle and lack of serviceability and durability. Textile wet processing is the collective term for the processes that are used to improve the textiles in terms of these desirable properties. The most common way to examine textile wet processing is to split it into the following three stages (Roy Choudhury 2006; The Hong Kong Cotton Spinners Association 2007; Leung, Lo, and Yeung 1996):
Pretreatment (preparation) Colouration (dyeing and printing) Finishing
Different textile materials possess different inherent impurities. The pretreatment processes, therefore, vary for textile substrates. However, they can be generalised into a few types as follows (Roy Choudhury 2006; The Hong Kong Cotton Spinners Association 2007; Leung, Lo, and Yeung 1996; Vigo 1994):
1. Removal of loose fibres or yarns projecting on the surface. In a singeing process, the removal is done by burning, while in shearing and cropping processes, the removal is done by cutting (most projecting threads, which hamper uniform printing) with the help of an extruder type of blade.
