Hello, my name is Tatiana, in case you do not know, I work in product development here at Creator Warehouse,
and today we'll be looking into fabric testing, which is great because I heard that some of the
all-float-pain beeps have been commenting saying that you want a more deep dive
into what goes into product testing, which is amazing because that is my favorite part,
and ask and you shall receive. We will be going behind the scenes into our clothing
and seeing how the standardized tests can relate to real-world performance.
We'll be looking into a variety of things, such as color facets of different fabrics,
abrasion testing, some water-repellency testing,
some launder testing, as well as some weight
using a GSM cutter. So for some of the standardized tests that we do,
we look at things like color fastest to laundering, we look at things like abrasion resistance,
we look at everything in regards to color fastest to lighting,
changing in all these different areas, and one of the things that we also look at is,
for example, such as the cult favorite, Uncle Linus Hoodie,
which is getting a little bit of a refreshment, doing it in a different kind of construction
for future releases, hopefully, is we look at something like a ATC 8-2016,
which you can see is color fastest to cropping, or you can look at it as in color transfer
from a lighter colored fabric. So when looking at the actual tests,
you can see that with these white strips, which is also called cropping cloth,
is evaluated up against what's called a crock meter.
When you are doing that, essentially, you are rubbing, doing a rubbing motion against the fabric
in order to see if there's any color transfer, either in dry conditions,
so that would just be a standard condition, as well as in wet conditions
that it's wetted with still water. If any color transfer has occurred,
you would evaluate it on a grayscale method.
So essentially, it is like a piece of cardstock that has a variety of different grays
that have a different opacity, and it is assigned a number.
That test technician would then go to something like a light box with a standard lighting condition,
and then evaluate the crocking cloth
that had any color transfer that occurred to the standard grays that are listed out
in a one-to-five scale. So five would be the best, therefore, you would see practically nothing
on the crocking cloth, or it would be a one where you would see a significant change.
Then once we get that test, we are able to evaluate whether or not
it meets the requirement, and we will continue, or we will ask our supplier and say,
hey, we definitely need to make this better, because we don't want any color transfer.
Last thing you want is to sit on a white couch, and for you to come up,
and there to be a color transfer that occurred. So the next one that I will be talking about
is also AATCC 61 version 2013.
So essentially what this is, is color fastest washing.
When you look at it, how it's done is you take the fabric,
and you sew it with a multi-fiber strip. So this uses acetate, a cotton, nylon, polyester, acrylic,
and the last one is like a worsted wool. So that would essentially encompass, for example,
any other trims or anything that is on a garment, or when you bundle everything up to throw in the wash,
obviously they're all gonna have different fiber contents. The cool thing about this machine
is essentially you would add in a metal cup with the test specimen with the multi-fiber strip,
as well as 50 steel balls, in order to simulate a tumbling cycle,
and you would add the washing detergent, and therefore it would spin a lot of time,
and then you would dry the fabric specimen with the multi-fiber strip,
and then you would evaluate that multi-fiber strip to see if there was any color change that occurred.
Within this, again, you would be using the same grayscale
in order to evaluate, but instead of using it with just a standard white cloth,
like the crocking cloth, you would use it for the multi-fiber strip of all the different fiber contents.
So each fiber would be given a scale within that.
And again, using that grayscale with the different opacities,
you would then evaluate the different fiber strips. Another way that we look into fabrics
is by, for example, looking at standard tests
and seeing how they would relate to real-world scenarios.
For example, when looking at the backpack, we are looking at a variety of different construction types
when considering the double layer that we will add for future backpack iterations.
So we looked at a variety of different sample constructions, for example, such as when looking at bonding
with a different adhesive, as well as some stitched ones that are stitched with self
or stitched with other different types of fabrics
to see what would behave the best. Now, when looking at that in comparison
to different testing standards, one of the tests that we used
was ASTM D49-66-12 version 2016,
which is essentially a abrasion resistance test where you would use 12 kilopascals of pressure
and the endpoint would be 10,000 rubs. So when looking at that,
when you're looking at the actual test machine, has the weights that are applied
and a standard cloth on the bottom and your tested specimen on top,
which is then rubbed in a Lissajul's pattern in order to get the overall rubbing on the test specimen,
which you would then evaluate, again, on a graded scale.
And I always like to bring in the test specimens as well
to see how much has been abraded through. So sometimes tests happen randomly right at our office,
especially when I get in a lot of new development fabrics. I like to get my hands right in there
to make sure that it's an offering that we want to develop and bring to market.
So a lot of times I will do a water repellency test,
which is essentially just using a good old bottle of H2O
and spraying it on the fabric to see whether or not it starts to beat off
or whether it starts to absorb in the actual fabric. So for example, this is a fabric
that we are looking at developing that may be for future launches.
So this is a nylon base with a DWR,
which is a durable water repellency coating on the face.
The membrane is a E-PTFE,
which is an expanded polytetrafluoroethylene membrane
that is used for a variety of properties, such as water repellency and thermal resistance,
and then also a nylon meshback. So something like that.
It's something that we would do in office in comparison to a standard test
when I would send it off for third-party testing. We would do AATCC-22,
which is a water repellency test where the fabric is late at an angle,
and then you would spray a certain amount of water, and based off of whether or not it starts to beat off
the fabric or start to absorb, again, it'd be rated on a scale.
And then obviously, the more it beats off, the better it performs, the less
you probably need to reevaluate your coating. Or when measuring how a fabric resists water,
you could look at something like a hydrostatic test where we would use something like AATCC-127,
which is essentially where you would take a piece of fabric and fit it over a water column,
and you would measure based off of the water pressure how much it takes in order for it to actually leak
and rupture the fabric. Another way that we do in-house office tests
is through laundry testing. So a lot of times when we get proto samples
or any quality samples in general, we like to do a good old-fashioned laundry test.
So here is an example of another thing that hopefully you will find soon on lttsor.com.
And with that, we do a very standard washing test,
the same as that would react in any home, and then afterwards we take those key points
in order to measure to see things like shrinkage and how it behaves, whether or not it starts to spill,
whether there's any color fastest changes, and we would obviously evaluate that
and look into it further to make sure that it wouldn't happen for anything that gets put into production.
So here, next to the engineering area, we actually have our handy-dandy washer and dryer.
So usually I'm running up and down those steps in order to get my steps in and work these bad boys,
whether we do something like three washes and three dries
or whatever the team is looking for. Since I have one here, I'll show you how it works,
which you should obviously already know how to wash and dry, but you know what, you never know.
And these are standard mother's gain laundry detergent that has a synthetic smell that leaves everyone wondering,
why the hell are you doing this? It's usually when we're running it for long periods of time, over and over again,
it just absolutely, it has everything smelling
like fresh laundry. So another thing that's super interesting with laundry,
get a load of this, CGSB, which is the Canadian General Standards Board,
has actually put out a disclaimer for their home laundering conditions,
saying that they can't necessarily keep totally up to date
with the washer and dryer industry, because essentially what they're doing is they care more
about the effectiveness of washing and drying and not necessarily keeping your clothes in mint condition
and keeping them for long periods of time. Therefore, they always recommend, and so do I,
to follow the care instructions, because all of this high heat and high with washing
as well as drying and that really fast tumbling process
is essentially just deteriorating your clothes. So that's one key laundry tip
is to always follow the care instructions. Lastly, another thing that we do in house a lot
is getting the weight of a garment. So this, for example, is a GSM cutter,
and GSM stands for grams per square meter, which can be used to calculate density.
We put this little rubber plate in behind, we put it on top,
and when you can see, it actually has a little blade in there
in order to cut it, and this will create a perfect circular diameter
of 113 millimeters. So hold it down, punch through it, peel it away,
and there you go. You would take this and basically weigh it,
and that would give you an accurate GSM, at least preliminary.
Of course, we do a lot of third-party testing as well
to confirm because you never know, because this is not necessarily, of course,
standardized conditions. Therefore, it's always good to do that preliminary first,
and then always check again beforehand. That is it for testing. We are always looking towards innovating and adapting
and having new standards going forward in order to match any real-world scenarios,
and create the best, most long-lasting products, and hopefully, you learned a little bit more
about fabric testing, and maybe a laundry tip on there too.