The Textile Center has two physical testing labs that house over $1 million worth of equipment that make it possible to perform a wide variety of physical testing on fibers, yarns, and fabrics.

Fibers can be singled out and analyzed for size, breaking strength, elongation, staple length, and other attributes.

Yarns may be processed through the latest generation Uster UT4, Tensorapid and Tensojet machines for a thorough look at the quality of your product. Yarns may also be tested for shedding, turns per inch, and friction in this lab.

Fabrics can be analyzed for content and construction by breaking them down into yarn or fiber form and running tests or they can be tested in fabric form for ball burst, tear strength, pilling, shrinkage and more. In addition we can analyze the fabric and determine the weave or knit patterns used to produce the fabric.

The wet processing lab plays host to equipment designed for chemical testing.

Fiber identification via burnouts, flame tests, and melting points are performed here.

Color comparison may be accomplished by using the spectrophotometer. Dye and finish formulations can be created and applied to a variety of substrates.

Absorbency, accelerated washing, various shrinkage tests and extractables content are all carried out in this lab.

The equipment in this lab offers an assortment of testing possibilities including colorfastness.

The microscopy lab is a good place to get up close to your favorite fibers, yarns, or fabrics.

Photomicrographs, which can be saved as digital pictures, are taken to help identify fibers. Cross-sections, cotton maturity, size, and yarn content may also be performed in the microscopy lab. Using birefringence, the differences in yarn types can be determined.

The microscopy lab also has a scanning electron microscope (SEM) that is useful in taking photographs of the fiber surface. The SEM is a very powerful tool that may be used in variety of ways to investigate fiber issues.

Staff members at the Textile Technology Center are adept at analyzing both yarn and fabric defects and determining their root cause. They have numerous tools and resources at their disposal to aid in these types of analysis. For example differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) can determine the heat history of a textile product and plastic replicas can readily determine the potential source of barre' in fabric. There is much, much more that can be determined with the available expertise and equipment resources.