Grain Alignment

Bowing is the angular distortion of the filling yarns in its traverse across the warp yarns. This places conflicting stresses in the fabric. These stresses create variations of slack and tightness in the spread. Such variations lead to cut components, which are both oversized and undersized. Tight edginess and bowing often go together in the same bolt. Many plants have definite policies about not using bowed or tight edge fabric.

Splicing

Splicing refers to the overlapping of two ends in a ply consisting of two or more pieces. This occurs when damage in the fabric must be cut out or when two or more bolts are spread consecutively as one both (no shade difference). The overlap in every splice must always be great enough to permit every pattern section in the splice to be cut exactly as its pattern sections. Excessive overlaps yield large waste splice ends and excess pattern sections. This is discussed more fully in section 5 of the chapter.

Damage Placement

The quality of damage placement in a spread is measured by the economy with which damages are removed from the plies during the spreading. This often calls for changing the ply sequence and/or placement of fabric section containing the damage (see section 5).

Surface Direction

 An error in the surface direction of a ply spoils the quality of all or some of the cut components with respect to either nap or fabric design. 

Static Electricity

Static in spreading refers to the electrical charge generated in the fabric during the spreading process. If this charge remains in the fabric, the spread may be distorted by either the repelling of adjacent like charges or the attraction of adjacent unlike charges. Sometimes these induced actions will affect cut components without affection the alignment or ply compactness. The sewing operators will find it difficult either to separate adjacent charge plies, or to properly manipulate two repelling plies in a sewing action. Static can be eliminated from spreads of fabric with given fiber construction and finish by one of fabrics with given fiber construction and finish by one of the following three mechanical methods: (1) increasing the humidity in the cutting room; (2) decreasing friction contact of the fabric’s surface against the spreading equipment as the fabric is unbolted onto the spread; and (3) using static eliminators to neutralize the generated static charge. The static eliminators are similar to those used to eliminate static in sewing. The static charge must be eliminated at or before the moment the fabric assumes its ply position.

A change in a fabric’s fiber content, construction, and/or finish may eliminate static generation under specific spreading conditions.