A Novel Technique for Evaluating the Appearance and Quality of a Cotton Fabric 1

Abstract

The unprinted side of an electronically printed fabric clearly shows almost all the common defects of its constituent fibers, yarns, and even its construction, thereby giving a true picture of the fabric's physical appearance. The defects of the constituents may include immature fiber neps, fiber contamination, yarn nonuniformity and defects, expo sure of any noncellulosic synthetic fiber core (such as glass) on the surface of a multicomponent core-wrap-yarn fabric, and construction faults such as thick and thin places, skewness, and broken ends, among others. Based on this discovery, a novel, computerized method of quickly evaluating the appearance and thus the general quality of a cotton or predominantly cotton fabric is suggested. Basically, the method involves: an electronic "solid printing" (i.e., continuous printing or so-called "electronic dyeing") of one face or side of a greige or bleached fabric specimen with a precontrolled ink jet of any desired color or shade on a computer printer and an evaluation of the unprinted face of the fabric. The evaluation may be done either by a subjective visual examination of the unprinted side of the fabric or by an objective, pre-programmed image analysis of a computer generated (scanned or videoed) electronic file/copy of the unprinted face. Although most typical defects and faults of a fabric's constituent fibers and yarns, which ultimately determine its appearance and hence its quality, can be easily examined and classified visually, their automatic objective classification is complex and still requires extensive computer programming to establish scientific reliability for different fabrics and color resolutions. However, the new method may be used as an efficient on-line, off-line, or research tool for quickly and subjectively assessing and grading the physical appear ance and general quality of a cotton or predominantly cotton fabric.