Formation of leather sheet material using hydroentanglement
AssigneeE-Leather Limited
InventorChristopher Graham Bevan
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Leather sheet material is made by hydroentangling a web (4) of mixed reclaimed leather fibers and synthetic fibers. The synthetic fibers are meltable bicomponent fibers which are heated prior to entanglement to fuse and form a supporting network for the leather fibers. A sheet of tissue paper (1a) is laid over the surface of the leather fiber web (4) and hydroentanglement jets (16) are directed through the tissue paper into the web.
Claims10
A method of forming sheet material from a mixture of fibres comprising mainly leather base fibres and additional synthetic fibres, said synthetic fibres having outer meltable layers, comprising the steps of:
- providing a porous tissue web material
- forming the fibres into a web;
- with said porous tissue web material comprising a face thereon
- heating to melt the outer layers of the additional synthetic fibres so as to cause such fibres to fuse together at intersections to form a network within the web, and to bond the additional synthetic fibres to the tissue material to form a laminate with a tissue web face
- subjecting the laminate with tissue web face to hydroentanglement applied to the tissue web face to entangle the base fibres while constrained by the network;
- the tissue web material disintegrating substantially wholly when subjected to said hydroentanglement.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.