DESCRIPTION Technical Field This invention relates to a machine and method for the combined mechanical and thermal treatment of fabrics to provide effects of dimensional restorability and hand and, in particular, for treating knitted fabrics continuously or discontinuously.

Prior Art

As is well known in the textile industry, it is a strong requirement that a fabric maintains its dimensional stability even after tailoring, wearing and ordinary cleaning and laundering treatments. This applies in particular to knitted fabrics which, by their very nature, tend to lose their dimensional stability more easily than other fabrics. For this purpose, fabric finishing processes use various devices and treatments to promote the dimensional restorability of the fabric so that this value is as close as possible to the maximum that this will have during the future washing and drying treatments necessary for cleaning an item of clothing tailored with the fabric. Of the treatments currently possible, those most commonly used are essentially the following: run through a free dryer where the open-width, wet or moistened fabric is overfed continuously on a conveyor belt moving through a drying tunnel; run through a compactor where the open-width, moistened and heated fabric is continuously forced mechanically to recover its length; drying in a tumbler where the fabric in rope form is discontinuously loaded into a rotating tumbler and heated with hot air. The first and second types of treatment are not particularly effective and, in most cases, both the treatments, performed immediately after one another, are necessary to obtain an acceptable result.

The third type of prior art treatment, that is, tumble drying, is by far the most effective and is normally used as a limit term of reference. Tumble drying, however, has the serious disadvantages of being discontinuous, with the fabric in rope form, of being possible only on small quantities at a time with problems of knotting and wringing, of not providing uniform quality and, lastly, of being labour- intensive.

The treatments described above, when applied to knitted fabrics in particular, make it very difficult to eliminate the stresses generated in the fibres in the course of knitting, which means that obtaining a dimensionally recovered and well stabilized fabric can be a problem.

The methods used to help fabric relaxation include vibrating or beating in order to reduce friction between the fibres and between the fibres and other surfaces in contact with them.

Patent documents GBl 178270, GB1304733, EP148113A1, EP130342A2, US4219942 describe machines equipped with vibrating conveyor belts for the fabric. The flexibility of the belts in these machines prevents vibrations from being adequately transmitted to the fabric. Patent document GB2103670 describes apparatus and methods for relieving stresses in fabric which is made up into a roll or bolt preparatory to further processing. In one of the examples described, the fabric is unwound in such a way as leave a portion of it slack and to lay it on a vibrating plate. Document GB879483 describes an apparatus in which a damp fabric is made to vibrate using a vibrating grid in a drying zone. The amplitude of vibration imparted to the fabric decreases progressively in the direction of fabric feed.

Document FR 1024514 describes a method for stress-relieving a fabric where the fabric is opened out and made to pass on a vibrating support. Alternatively, the fabric may be folded on a vibrating table. To increase the efficacy of the treatment, the fabric may be loaded with weights.

Document US3594914 describes an apparatus comprising at least an inclined vibrating plate on which the fabric slides and is exposed to heating jets.

The solutions cited above are not entirely satisfactory because the vibrations are imparted to fabric surfaces that are in an opened-out form or are moderately pleated. Although this determines a reduction in the friction between the fibres, the accelerations transmitted to them are limited.

In other words, the forces of inertia generated and acting on the fibres are insufficient to dimensionally recover and stabilize the fabric to a good degree.

Disclosure of the Invention This invention therefore has for an aim to provide a process for treating fabrics continuously and discontinuously in open-width form, and which permits drying of a fabric, especially a knitted fabric, while simultaneously obtaining an effect of recovery, swelling and relaxation that improves hand feel and dimensional stability. To achieve this aim, the invention provides a machine and method according to the appended claims, where the fabric is treated by the special combined action of heat and mechanical vibration.

The advantages lie essentially in the fact that the treated fabric does not exhibit residual tension due to elastic or plastic deformation which is recovered by the combination treatment and thus does not lead to dimensional instability in the fabric during subsequent processes.

These and other advantages will be better understood from the following description with reference to the accompanying drawings illustrating preferred non-limiting embodiments of the invention.

Brief Description of the Drawings In the drawings:

- Figure 1 schematically illustrates a machine according to the invention for the discontinuous treatment of a fabric;

- Figure 2 is a schematic perspective view of a preferred embodiment of the machine of Figure 1; - Figure 3 schematically illustrates a machine according to the invention for the continuous treatment of a fabric;

- Figure 4 schematically illustrates another embodiment of the machine according to the invention for the continuous treatment of a fabric.

Preferred Embodiment of the Invention Figure 1 illustrates a first embodiment of a machine according to the invention for the discontinuous, combined mechanical and thermal treatment of a fabric T. To better illustrate the essential parts of the machine, the containment walls are not shown. The machine comprises a rigid, vibrating platform 2, preferably in the form of a tub, and a drying tunnel 16 equipped with a hot air distributor 8 fed by a fan 10. Power-driven rollers 5, 6 are provided for picking up the fabric T from the platform, running it through the tunnel and returning it to the platform.

According to the invention, the fabric T passing over the vibrating platform 2 is, instant by instant, in the form of a substantially compact mass 3, with the exception of the portion of it that is picked up from the platform, opened out and run through the drying tunnel and then placed on the platform again.

The platform 2 is mounted on visco-elastic suspension elements 12 and is made to vibrate by a slider-crank mechanism of per se known type.

In the embodiment illustrated, the platform 2 has a flat surface for supporting the fabric but other shapes - for example, curved or polygonal - are also imaginable. The vibrations or oscillations are preferably vertical or have a significant vertical component.

In particular, the amplitude and frequency of the oscillations are induced in such a way that the acceleration impressed on the fabric is greater than gravity, so that the entire mass of the fabric is jolted and not just the part of it that is in direct contact with the platform 2, as in the case of prior art vibrating belt known systems.

For example, the peak-to-peak amplitude of the vibrations or oscillations may be between 20 and 60 mm, and the frequency between 5 and 15Hz or, more preferably, between 5Hz and 10Hz. The heating system 8 is preferably of the hot air type, with air partly recirculated, if necessary.

To increase the effectiveness of the treatment the fabric T should initially be in a moistened or wet state.

Heating means 9 may be provided for acting on the mass 3 of fabric subjected to the vibratory action. Figure 2 shows a preferred embodiment of a machine according to the invention for the discontinuous treatment of a knitted fabric.

A substantially compact mass 3 of fabric T to be treated is placed on a vibrating platform 2. A heated tunnel, comprising a pair of hot air distributors, namely an upper distributor 8a and a lower distributor 8b, is mounted over the vibrating platform. A mechanical suspension and vibration system 12 powered by an electric motor 13, elastically supports, and imparts vertical oscillations to, the platform 2.

The fabric is sewn head to tail in such a way as to form a closed loop that moves round continuously within the machine.

In effect, it is picked up from the platform by the roller 5 (see arrow 4a) and returned to the platform by the roller 6 (see arrow 4b) after being placed on the conveyor belt 7 and passed through the drying tunnel formed by the distributors 8a and 8b.

The hot air fed into the tunnel by the distributors 8a and 8b through the fan 10 and heated by a direct or indirect heating system 15 may be partly recirculated and partly renovated depending on the flow rate set using the extraction fan 11. A filter 14 intercepts all the air moved by the recirculation fan 10 and by the extraction fan 11, thus preventing airborne fluff from building up in the machine and/or escape through the extraction duct.

Figures 3 and 4 illustrate embodiments of the machine for the continuous treatment of a fabric T in open-width form. In Figure 3 the fabric in the form of a substantially compact mass is fed continuously onto a first vibrating platform 18 and from there is transferred by rollers 17 through a heated tunnel 16 to a second vibrating platform 19 from where it is fed continuously out of the machine.

Advantageously, this embodiment makes it possible to apply an alternating movement to the fabric between the two platforms at suitably higher speeds than the speeds at which it is fed into and out of the machine, so as to keep a constant load of fabric in the machine but increasing by a desired amount the length of time it remains in the machine.

Figure 4 shows three consecutive vibrating platforms 18, 19, 20 alternated with two drying tunnels 16, as an example of a modular installation using any number of vibrating platforms and heated tunnels 16 to perform continuous treatment in open-width form at proportionally higher production speeds.

As illustrated in the drawing, each vibrating platform may be equipped with a heating element 9 mounted over it. Further, the fabric feeding in may be conveniently pre-heated and that feed out thermoset by suitable additional heating systems, whether of the hot air type, like the tunnel 16, or of other type.

The invention achieves considerable technical advantages.

A first advantage is that the fabric can be placed in whole or in part on one or more rigid, vibrating platforms, in such a way that the relaxation and compacting action induced in the mass of fabric accumulated on the platform can, in combination with the action of the heat applied by the drying system, absorb residual tensions in the fabric and recover deformation, whether elastic or plastic.

This advantage is particularly significant if we consider that fabric stretch is usually more plastic then elastic. It is also possible to apply to the platforms vibrations whose frequency and amplitude are such as not to simply reduce the friction between the platform and the fabric, and hence the tension created by this, but also to induce in the fabric accelerations that are multiples of gravity acceleration and hence mass forces that are multiples of the fabric's weight in such a way as to make the fibres slide relative to each other and to obtain a considerable compacting and stabilizing effect.