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- 100% cotton knit dyeing process: pretreatment, reactive dyeing curves and finishing How 100% cotton knits are scoured, bleached, reactive dyed and finished on a working winch floor: nine dyeing…
- CVC fabric dyeing process: two-bath disperse and reactive dyeing for cotton-polyester knits How CVC and PC knits are dyed in two baths on a working dye house floor: disperse dyeing…
- 100% polyester knit dyeing process: disperse dyeing at 130°C and reduction clearing How 100% polyester knits are disperse dyed on a working dye house floor: pH 4.5, 1°C per minute…
- Cotton-elastane (Lycra) knit dyeing process: heat setting, gentle scour and reactive dyeing How cotton-elastane (Lycra) knits are heat set, scoured and reactive dyed on a working dye house floor, with…
- 100% viscose knit dyeing process: mild scour, 60°C reactive dyeing and shrinkage control How 100% viscose knits are scoured, reactive dyed and washed off on a working dye house floor, why…
All dyeing & finishing guides
Reactive dye vs pigment dye: the real difference on cotton
Reactive dye bonds inside the fibre; pigment is glued on the surface with a binder. How each is applied, how they perform…
Reactive dye vs disperse dye: cotton, polyester and blends
Reactive dye bonds to cotton at about 60°C; disperse dye dissolves into polyester at 130°C. Why neither works on the other fibre,…
Reactive dye vs vat dye: which one does your cotton need?
Reactive dye bonds to cotton; vat dye is reduced, absorbed and oxidised back to a solid inside it. How the two compare…
Types of dyeing machines in the textile industry
Jet, soft-flow, airflow and winch machines for knit fabric; jigger, beam and pad ranges for woven; package machines for yarn and drums…
Heat setting of polyester and elastane knit fabric: how it works
Heat setting fixes polyester, nylon and elastane fabric at a chosen width at about 180–200°C. Typical settings, pre-setting versus post-setting, which knits…
Level dyeing: strike, migration, exhaustion and how to avoid uneven shades
Why knit fabric comes out patchy, listed or ended in jet and soft-flow machines, and how heating rate, dosing, cycle time and…
Shade matching in the dye lab: from lab dip to bulk, right first time
How knit dye labs turn a buyer's standard into an approved lab dip and a bulk recipe that hits shade first time:…
Colour measurement in dyeing: spectrophotometer, CIELab, Delta E and metamerism
How a spectrophotometer reads a fabric, what L*, a*, b*, C* and h mean for shade correction, how ΔE CMC and CIEDE2000…
Dyeing auxiliaries explained: what each chemical in the bath does
From wetting agents to softeners, every auxiliary in a knit dyeing recipe has one job. Here is what each chemical class does,…
Water quality in textile dyeing: hardness, iron, alkalinity, chlorine and pH
Water is more than 95% of every dye bath. Here is what to test, typical targets, how hardness, metals, chlorine and bicarbonate…
About Dyeing & Finishing
Each process here is the one we actually run. You will find the pretreatment for each fibre, the dyeing curve with its dosing steps, the wash-off and after-treatment, and the finishing that follows. Where a fibre needs something different, such as a cooler scour for elastane, a 130°C disperse bath for polyester, or no enzyme for viscose, the article says why.
Blends get their own articles because they behave differently from either fibre alone. CVC needs two baths, cotton-elastane needs heat setting before dyeing, and lyocell takes its enzyme after dyeing, not before. Every process article has a flowchart, so you can see the whole route at a glance before reading the detail.
The section also covers special processes such as mercerising and stripping, and will grow to cover each dye class (reactive, disperse, acid and the rest) and the finishing steps after dyeing: heat setting, stenter, compacting and softening.
Nothing here is copied from a textbook. Where a number comes from our own records, the article says so, and where a step depends on the fabric or the shade, it says that too.
Questions about dyeing & finishing
What temperature is reactive dyeing done at for cotton knits?
Most reactive dyeing of cotton knits runs at 60°C. Some shades use a migration step at 80°C before fixation, and special colours such as turquoise follow their own curves.
Why does polyester need 130°C?
Disperse dyes only enter polyester well above its glass transition temperature, so the bath is taken to 130°C under pressure. Below about 100°C polyester takes up almost no dye.
Why is CVC dyed in two baths?
The polyester part needs disperse dye at 130°C and the cotton part needs reactive dye at 60°C with salt and alkali. The two systems cannot run in one bath, so the polyester is dyed and reduction cleared first, then the cotton.
Do all knit fabrics get an enzyme treatment?
No. Cotton usually does. Viscose does not, because the enzyme weakens it. Lyocell gets its enzyme after dyeing, and polyester and nylon have no cellulose for the enzyme to work on.