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carpet

How it's made?

Carpeting for your Home

Carpet

Knowing how carpet is made can be very advantageous. The different materials that make up various carpets help us understand and evaluate their performance aspects: why certain carpets are easier to install, why some wear better, longer, and why others are easier to care for and clean.

Carpet flooring | Roberts Carpet & Fine Floors

How it's made

Tips

  • Thicker is not always better. For instance, high traffic areas need lower profiles to avoid matting and crushing
  • Tight twists in the yarn perform better than loose and frayed
  • Firm and dense pile equates to higher quality
  • The more backing visible, the less dense and durable

STYLE

Material & Fibers

Fiber is the basic material of makeup of carpet. 90% of carpet is synthetic, while the other 10% is mostly wool.

 1. Nylon

  • 75% of carpet is made of nylon
  • Performs well overall
  • Nylon is the leader in: appearance retention, fade and heat resistance, soil and stain resistance, color and styling

2. Polypropylene

  • Introduced in the late 1950's in Italy
  • Not as resilient or resistant to abrasion as nylon
  • Naturally stain and fade resistant
  • Resistant to moisture
  • Limited range of color options
  • Most often used in loop pile constructions

3. Polyester

  • Introduced to the carpet industry in the mid 1960's
  • Well accepted for bulkiness, color clarity, and good stain and fade resistance
  • Not as resilient as nylon, but still performs well

4. PET by Mohawk

  • 100% recycled material
  • Plastic bottles are collected, separated by color, and then ground and melted
  • Great color clarity, stain resistance, durability
  • Keeps over 3 billion bottles out of landfills!

5. SmartStrand

  • Eliminates shedding
  • Highly stain resistant and durable
  • 37% renewable materials

6. Wool

  • Natural fiber
  • Since wool is a natural fiber, it ranges in color from off-white to black, with many earthen tones between.
  • Wool doesn't stand up to abrasion and moisture as well as synthetics, it cleans well and is known to age gracefully.
  • Most expensive carpet fiber
  • Primarily from New Zealand, Argentina, and the United Kingdom.

7. *Berber

  • Considered a type of carpet construction, rather than fiber
  • The name, Berber, originates from North African sheepherders
  • Berbers produced coarse wool, with color flecks in their yarns

MAKING THE CARPET: A 3-PART PROCESS

Step 1: Tufting

  • Weaving the synthetic or staple fiber into a primary backing material
  • The tufting machine has 800 to 2000 needles, like a sewing machine to pull the yarn through the primary backing material
  • The tufting machine is 12 feet wide; its needles penetrate the backing and a small hook (looper) grabs the yarn and holds it in place

Loop Pile Construction

  • Holds appearance well
  • No exposed yarn tips
  • Only sides of the yarn are exposed to wear and stress

Alternative Step

  • Sometimes the looper cuts small loops creating a cut pile
  • The lengths of these pieces are called pile height
  • In order to create pattern on the surface, cuts are programmed to cut only some of the loops

Step 2: Application of Dye

Two dyeing processes

  • Yarn Dyeing/Pre-Dyeing: color is applied to the yarn prior to tufting
    • Good side-by-side color consistency, large lot sizes, and uniformity
  • Carpet Dyeing: applying color to the yarn after tufting
    • Greater color flexibility

Carpet Dyeing Methods

  • Beck/Batch Dyeing: Stitching the ends together, then running the tufted carpet loop through large vats of dye and water for several hours.
    • Ideal for small runs, heavier face-weight products
  • Continuous Dyeing: Similar to Beck dyeing but carpet is also run through processes other than dyeing
    • Applies color to the face by spraying or printing, also to create multicolor or patterned effects
  • Screen Printing: Color is applied through 1-8 silk-screens

Step 3: Manufacturing the carpet

  • Finishing Process: A single, five-part, production line completes the final construction stages
    1. Latex: A coat of latex is applied to dyed carpets.
    2. Secondary Backing: A layer of woven synthetic polypropylene is applied
    3. Shape Preservation: The two parts are squeezed together in a large heated press and held firmly
    4. Shearing: Loose ends and projecting fibers created during the tufting process are removed to help with yarn tip definition
    5. Inspection: Carpet is checked for color uniformity and defects before rolled, wrapped, and shipped, ready for installation