Textile Testing Methods included in this section are all free to use and all the information were collected from the people who have been still serving in textile testing labs till now. You may feel free to contact us regarding any testing procedure explained in this website.

In any good dye house a Quality Control and Quality Assurance systems should go hand in hand. The knowledge of QC operations should lead to the formation of good QA systems. 

Let us discuss with some of QA and QC operations, textile test methods, frequency etc in details.

Let us list down the important QA and QC points and relevant test elements to be considered, as below:
 

Quality Assurance Elements: 
In QA elements we should consider the quality of all raw materials, right from the processing of fabric or yarn to all the dyes and chemicals used and in QC elements we should test the quality of finished products for the required level of standards. In both cases the following Textile Testing Methods can be applied for.


I. Raw Materials and other inputs:

  1. Water Quality
  a. Hardness
  i. bi-carbonate
  ii. Carbonates. sulphates and chloride
  b. TDS (Total Dissolved Solids)
  c. Turbidity
  d. Other metals –iron, copper

  2. Quality of Auxiliary Chemicals used.
  a. Quality of surfactants like wetting, scouring agents
  i. Wetting time of wetting agents
  ii. Solid content
  iii. Ionic nature
  iv. Cloud point of non-ionic products
  v. foaming characters
  b. Quality of sequestering agents 
  i. Chelating power
  ii. pH
  iii. solid content 
  c. Quality of leveling/dispersing agents
  i. Ionic nature
  ii. concentration required
  iii. solid content
  iv. suitability for metal complex dyes
  d. Quality of Peroxide Stabilizers
  i. Solid content
  ii. Concentration required for bleaching
  e. Quality of peroxide killers
  i. Whether it is an enzyme or inorganic product
  ii. concentration required for treatment
  iii. If it is enzyme, get the test method from the manufacturer himself.
  f. Quality of Cationic dye fixing agents
  i. Solid content
  ii. Free Formaldehyde content
  iii.. Degree of Change in tone of a shade
  iv. How much light fastness is affected?
  g. Quality of Softeners
  i. Ionic nature
  ii. Degree of softness acquired for a standard concentration
  iii. Degree of tone change of a shade
  iv. wash Durability. Solid content

  h. Determination of Acid Value of a product?
  Detailed method to find out the acid value of a product  

  i. Determination of Polymer content of a binder?
  Detailed method to find out the polymer content of a binder.  

  j. Quality of Dyestuff:
  Dyestuff properties and selection method for a combination

  2. Quality of Basic Chemicals used and its concentration. 

  i Caustic soda – purity and concentration percentage
  ii Soda Ash – purity and concentration
  iii. Acetic Acid, Hydrochloric acid, Sulphuric acid, Oxalic acid – purity and concentration
  iv. Hydrogen Peroxide – purity and concentration
  v. Common Salt – purity, hardness of a particular concentration
  vi. Sodium Hypochlorite - concentration 
  3. Test for Iron and Copper in cotton fibre

II. Quality Requirements of griege (un-processed) textile goods

Greige Cotton fabric / Yarn quality requirements
Greige Wool fabric / Yarn quality requirements

III. Quality Control Elements:


  1. Physical Properties:
  a. Appearance – color and uniformity of finished yarn or fabric - visual assessment only.
  b. Tensile strength of finished yarn
  c. CSP of finished yarn
  d. Tear strength of finished fabric
  e. GSM of fabric of finished 
  f. Shrinkage Test of Woven fabric and Knit fabric.


  2. Finished goods’ Qualities:
What is a Grey Scale and Staining Scale? How Fastness grading is done?
Fastness to Washing
Fastness to Crocking or Rubbing fastness
Fastness to water
Fastness to perspiration
Fastness to peroxide bleach
Fastness to Chlorine or Chlorinated Pool water fastness
Fastness to Mercerising
Fastness to Hydrolysis
Fastness to Dry-cleaning
Fastness to light
Pilling Tests
What is whiteness Index
What is total color difference or DE 
Method of Detecting Starch and PVA
Method of testing desizing efficiency
Measurement of Absorbency
Antimicrobial Tests
Flammability Test
Detection and estimation of Formaldehyde content in Textiles