Lets's talk QUALITY FINISHING
1 November 1999From the USA , Stan Caplan, fabricare consultant, says that drycleaning is a business where quality is defined by the finishing.
A quality garment is determined, mainly, by the way it is finished. A dress can be sparkling clean and free of stains, circles and swales but it will be perceived to be of poor quality, overall, if it is finished poorly or improperly.
Quality finishing consists of achieving all the following:
• Restoring the garment, as nearly as possible, to its original new shape.
• Removing or eliminating all shine.
• Removing all button, pocket and seam impressions.
• Replacing creases in their proper place.
• Proper use of steam, heat, moisture, vacuum and head pressure.
• Leaving soft fabrics soft and hard fabrics hard.
• Avoiding stretching of knits.
Cool water
Removing shine is easily done if it is the finisher who has put it on the garment. Simply spray a mist of cool water on the fabric, then steam from the buck. If the shine is still there, repeat the process and also brush the fabric.
To remove shine that the wearer has put in (seat, elbows, underarms), however, can only be achieved by lightly passing over the fabric with very fine (00 grade) sandpaper or an emery cloth.
Removing button impressions can be done by ironing with the point of a hand iron or pulling up the indented buttons on a suit jacket or overcoat. Steaming from the buck is also effective.
Impressions
Remove pocket flap impressions by raising the flap and hand ironing over the impression. Seam impressions on light weight fabrics (mostly ladies’ apparel) can be avoided by pressing the seam off the buck or by using a lightweight piece of flannel beneath the seam to absorb it.
Avoid double creases, especially in trousers, by carefully setting the crease on the buck of the press. If the crease has been removed in wetcleaning, then arrange the trousers’ leg ‘seam to seam’ all the way up and press in the crease in its normal position.
A steam pressure of 70 psig (pounds per square inch gauge) is ideal since higher pressures are too hot and dry, while lower pressures are too moist. If a steam pressure regulating valve is used to maintain a constant 70 psig, then your boiler can be operated at a higher off-on pressure. Pressure controls the heat of steam, and the finisher can apply steam to heat-sensitive garments simply by applying it lightly and quickly. In other words, the time of application can control steam temperature more quickly than adjusting the steam pressure regulator. Note that it takes moist, not dry, steam to remove wrinkles.
Vacuuming cools, dries and sets the fabric to mould its shape. On the other hand, although vacuuming with the press head down sets sharp creases, vacuuming with the head down while the garment is still moist with steam is the most common cause of shine and seam impressions. Steam-moistened fibres are soft, and vacuuming the garment under head pressure dries the fibres while they are flattened instead of in their natural upright position. This can, however, be corrected by raising the press head and steaming from the buck with a light brushing (if needed).
Plus one
There are three types of press head pressure: contact (lightly touching the buck); medium (contact pressure plus one second high pressure with steam applied); high (high pressure, or locked head, for four seconds with steam applied). Choice will depend on the nature of the work being finished.
Use contact pressure after saturating a soft finish garment with buck steam. Release the head and apply vacuum while holding the fabric taut with your two hands.
Use medium pressure on lightweight, medium and fairly hard finish garments. Release the head after applying head steam and apply vacuum while holding the fabric taut with your two hands.
Use high, or lock, pressure on hard finish, tightly woven fabrics. Close the head and, after a few seconds of head steam, apply two seconds vacuum while the press head is down with high pressure. Release the press head and apply vacuum while holding the fabric taut with your two hands.
Air-operated
Most air-operated presses have a pedal or lever that controls the degree of head pressure applied. Contact pressure is the pressure exerted when the head is brought down and the pressure lever or pedal is depressed and then quickly released. High pressure is exerted when the pressure lever or pedal is depressed for at least four seconds before being released.
In addition to these general points, there are certain types of work which require specific handling methods. For example, if satin is sprayed with cool water and then steamed from the buck or head, it will deluster. This does not occur, however, if the satin garment is first steamed and then sprayed with cool water.
When finishing satin on a grid plate utility press, and the fabric is not wrinkled, bring the press head down under high pressure, apply two seconds of head steam, apply vacuum for six seconds, then lift the head and continue the vacuum for three seconds. If the garment is wrinkled, then apply buck steam first and apply the water spray (if needed) next. Vacuum and finish are then applied as before.
To return to trousers, to get sharp creases in these the front pant crease should be positioned on the buck with the centre seam just off the buck. Apply vacuum to hold the pants in place. Bring the press head down and release the vacuum when the head is holding the leg in place. Apply high pressure and steam from the top for three seconds. Raise the press head and apply vacuum for two seconds to remove the moisture, not the heat, from the fabric. Immediately bring the head down again for four seconds, with the vacuum on, to pull the heat of the head through the crease. Release the press head and continue to vacuum for four seconds.
| Operators need knowledge, skill and common sense |
| Operators in drycleaning finishing departments today have to be adept at successfully working with a huge array of fibres, fabrics and special chemical finishes. It is essential that staff have the right knowledge and skills: poor finishing contributes to between one third and one half of customer complaints about drycleaning services. An operator taking a jacket from a work batch used to have to determine if it was made of wool, cotton or linen. Today jackets and suits are made from a much wider range of materials including pure silk and viscose/acetate blends. An accurate care label can be extremely helpful in the finishing department, but it needs to be read in conjunction with the fibre content label. Garments retailed in the UK must, by law, have a proper fibre content label inserted, specifiying not only the fibres used in the garment but also the percentage of each. Natural fibres such as wool, cotton, linen and silk can usually be finished safely by using a hot iron with a sole plate temperature of up to 200 deg C provided the correct techniques are used. In practice, however, most silk and silk-like fabrics - such as polyester, nylon, viscose and acetate - should be finished by a warm iron with a sole temperature below 150 deg C. Sometimes attempts are made to finish acrylic items with a dry iron at a low temperature setting. This should be avoided. The shrinkage risk with modacrylic is so acute that garments made of this material should never be taken close to a press. Shrinkage and distortion of modacrylic fun furs or curtain fabrics may be seen even if they have only been placed on a hot surface - and especially if a wisp of steam has been applied. Many fabric finishes today are designed to build stiffness and body into the cloth. Some of these finishes withstand the drycleaning machine process but are damaged by heat during finishing. The finishes can be recognised by the plastic feel and handle they create, and an experienced operator will be able to identify them. Many chintzes and glazes on today's furnishing fabrics are sensitive to drycleaning and so care must be taken. Some may be adversely affected by perc while others are damaged simply by moisture in the drycleaning machine system. If the moisture level is maintained at a minimum, chintz can be processed and its quality remain almost intact. Whatever the chintz, the mechanical action in the drycleaning machine should be minimised in the usual way otherwise it may not be possible to rectify damage - however skilful the finishing operator may be. The care label should be studied to determine whether or not the fabric should be pressed at all. If the item has no particular sensitivity, then it can be carefully finished on a free-steam press, or ironed from the reverse with a cool steam iron on a professional ironing table. Some of today's fabrics, particularly heavy viscose cloths or low-cost viscose/linen blends, carry heavy stiffening sizes when they are new so they give a crisp, full-bodied linen feel during the first few times they are worn. Unfortunately, a great many of these stiffening sizes applied in manufacturing are not designed to resist a normal drycleaning process and this results in an extremely limp garment when it is first taken out of the machine. It is possible to improve the firmness of the fabric by correct finishing, but no amount of skill will restore the lost size. It is generally preferable to re-process the garment through the drycleaning machine using a single bath containing an appropriate drycleaning size. In drycleaning finishing, much emphasis is put on using the correct sequence of lays - different methods are advocated, different systems are utilised, and different finishing standards are achieved. Most sequences follow normal common sense. Every garment will need slight adjustments to compensate for its particulate construction. Cleaners should not be dogmatic but should judge the methods they use by the standards of results. |
