Natural Fills Testing
Natural Fill Testing and Quality Assurance
The form for submitting natural fill samples can be found here.
Services
IDFL performs many natural fill quality assurance services including testing bulk filling material and finished products, collecting samples from factories or retail stores and inspecting finished products. Services can be performed same-day for an additional fee.
Tests
What Is It?
Composition analysis identifies the components of a natural material.
How Is The Test Performed?
A specific weight of material is hand separated into component categories.
The test has two parts:
- The first separation classifies larger components into the following categories fibers and residue.
- The second separation classifies smaller components from a sub-specimen of animal or plant fibers category.
What Do The Results Mean?
The content analysis report gives the percentages by weight of each component category.
Why Do It?
Governments and buyers require labeling of finished products. The component percentages are the basis of the product label. The various systems for labeling help consumers and manufacturers buy and sell different quality products in a fair and level marketplace.
What Is It?
This test identifies the fibers present in a filling sample.
How Is It Done?
A sample is either examined under magnification, burned, treated with special solutions or chemically separated. Fibers are identified by distinct characteristics evident under magnification, observed during combustion or revealed during chemical separation (each fiber can be dissolved using specific chemicals).
What Do The Numbers Mean?
Results are generally given as a percentage of the fiber(s) found during testing. It can be a single fiber (#1) or a blend of two or more fibers (#2).
Why Do It?
This test is used to determine the fiber content of a filling and is generally
required for labeling. A label must state the ratio of multiple fibers.
WHAT IS IT?
Fiber Diameter (Denier) is the linear density of a natural fiber. It is defined as the weight in grams per 9000 meters of natural fiber. It correlates to the thickness of the natural fiber.
HOW IS IT DONE?
A 50g representative sample of the natural fill is prepared. 300 natural fibers are chosen at random from that selection. The 300 fibers are then weighted to the nearest 0.0001g.
WHAT DO THE NUMBERS MEAN?
The Fiber Diameter is reported in Denier. Denier is a unit of measurement of the fineness of a fiber and is equal to the fineness of a fiber weighing one gram for each 9000 meters.
Example: A 5 Denier Wool Fiber is finer than a 10 Denier Wool Fiber.
WHY DO IT?
Fiber Diameter is used to determine the natural fiber thickness. A higher denier count tends to equate to thicker, sturdier, and more durable material, while a lower denier count tends to equate to a sheerer, softer, and silkier material.
Recommended for natural fill material.
What Is It?
Color separation tests the amount of white and dark natural material in a sample.
How Is The Test Performed?
A sample is hand separated into white, dark, and borderline colors. How white a piece is depends on how it compares to a grayscale level. Depending on requirements, the borderline category can be re-classified into white or dark natural material according to specifications.
What Do The Results Mean?
Percentages of white, dark, and borderline are reported. The percentages are based on weights.
Example:
99% white means that 99% of the weight of the sample was classified as white.
Why Do It?
Many companies request only white natural material. Dark natural material that shows through fabric can dissuade a consumer from purchasing a product. The test gives a quantitative value of how much white natural material is in the plumage sample.
WHAT IS IT?
A fiber length is one individual natural fiber. This test measures the average length of the fibers in a sample of manufactured natural staple fibers.
HOW IS IT DONE?
A 50g representative sample of the natural fill is prepared. 25 staples are chosen at random from that selection. The length of each individual staple is manually measured.
WHAT DO THE NUMBERS MEAN?
The average of the 25 staples is used to calculate the natural staple length. Results are reported as the average length of the staples in the sample.
Example:
Average: 38.3 mm
WHY DO IT?
The staple length of a fiber sample can be used to determine the relative number of natural fibers above and below a specified length. If a fiber is too long, it will not process well in spinning, and if there is a preponderance of short fibers, the yarn might have a lower-than-normal breaking strength.
Recommended for natural fill material.
Standards
IDFL tests natural filling using the major global standards including EN (Europe), ASTM (North America), JIS (Japan), AATCC (North America), IDFL (Global), ISO (Global).