Quality before quantity: China turns increasingly to superior quality weaving machines from DORNIER for manufacturing technical fabrics
High-tech boom in China: More and more Chinese textile companies are choosing weaving machines from DORNIER in order to meet the growing demand for high quality technical fabrics for aircraft parts, filters, automotive and safety textiles. At the ITMA Asia International Textile Machinery trade fair in Shanghai (15-19 October), Dornier will exhibit the world‘s advanced weaving technology for producing high performance fabrics.
Audacious investment objectives, rising wages, enormous funds for research and development (equivalent to about 226 billion euro in 2017 alone) and emerging aspiration towards quality: China‘s evolution from the overflow production facility for the West into a high-tech industrial powerhouse in its own right shows no signs of flagging. This trend is also reflected strongly in the Chinese textile industry, and is being monitored attentively at the Lindauer DORNIER GmbH (LiDO): „China has always been an important market for us, but since the demand for higher quality textiles has also begun to grow, it has become our biggest market“, says Wolfgang Schöffl, Head of Business Unit Weaving Machines at DORNIER.
In China, LiDO weaving machines are used to create fine scarves and elegant women‘s apparel from cashmere wool and silk as well as intricate airplane parts from carbon fibers. This last category is part of the growing global market for technical textiles, which is supplied with special coatings, airbags, tirecord and filters as well as much else which is manufactured in the Middle Kingdom on weaving machines from DORNIER. And the volume of these high-performance fabrics required just to satisfy China‘s domestic demand is enormous.
Flawless processing of high-performance fibers
Let us consider filtration, for example: The fact that the Chinese city of Xi‘an cleans its air with the tallest anti-smog tower in the world (100 m) is convincing testament: cleaning air and water is a major concern in China. And this is one reason why DORNIER in Shanghai – for the first time ever in Asia – will exhibit its new P2 rapier weaving machine in its most powerful configuration (Type: TGP). This machine is able to bring a reed beat-up force of up to five tons for producing wide, seamless fabrics for high density air and water filters. „The textile is exposed to exceptionally high forces specifically for wet filtration; seams are weak spots, which should be avoided if possible“, explains Schöffl.
