upholstery
Upholstery is a term from textile technology , rubber and leather processing for the suspension , insulation or padding of objects. Nowadays, upholstery is mainly used in the clothing, furniture, automotive and packaging industries and is technically further developed.
Upholstery materials and fabrics
Before synthetically manufactured upholstery fabrics became widespread, there were only upholstery materials made from vegetable or animal fibers:
- Horsehair - the horse's body hair or tail and mane hair was collected, boiled or steamed in water and then used as a filling for mattresses , horsehair pillows and riding saddles, or in tailoring as an insert (e.g. shoulder pads ). The mixture with finer bovine hair from the tail and mane made the filling smoother.
- Down and feathers - especially from land and water fowl such as geese and ducks. Depending on the proportion of down and feathers in a padding, one speaks of: pure down, down, feathery down, three-quarter down, half-down and feathers.
- Wool from animals - the wool of sheep ( sheep wool ), cashmere goats ( cashmere wool ) and angora goats ( mohair ), angora rabbits ( angora ), camels (camel hair) and small camels such as alpacas , llamas and vicuñas , musk oxen ( quiviut ) and yaks ( yak wool ).
- Seagrass - is still fished from the sea or collected on the beach and then dried into hay. It is particularly suitable for chair upholstery.
- Kapok - fibers sitting on the inside of the kapok fruits, which are processed into a cotton-wool-like material. It is particularly suitable for mattresses.
The following upholstery fabrics are widely used in the packaging industry for security purposes:
- Paper , corrugated cardboard and wood wool
- Air bags and air cushions
- synthetic foams
- loose fillings in chip form
The following upholstery fabrics are used in the furniture industry:
- Metal wire mesh - which are connected to each other as a coherent spring body that forms the core of mattresses, seats, seats or pillows.
- Synthetic foams and fleeces - made of compressible (= compressible) materials with a cellular structure and low density. The following raw materials are possible:
- a. Man-made fibers that are woven or processed into upholstery fleece and wadding.
- b. Natural or synthetic rubber that is processed into latex foam , which is mainly used in mattress upholstery .
- c. Polyurethanes that are processed into PUR, polyether or cold foam, which are used in the upholstery of mattresses or seating furniture.
Upholstery of furniture
The base of the upholstery in upholstered furniture and box spring beds is the spring base , for which spring cores, spring wood slats, steel shaft springs or elastic belts are used. The spring core can be a cylinder spring core, Bonell spring core or - with high-quality furniture - pocket spring core. The cover of the spring core consists of foams of different degrees of hardness, which determine the seating comfort. The cushion is finished with a fleece or mat cover. With box spring beds, the spring base is followed by a bed pad. As a rule, it is a mattress that can be covered with a mattress protector in high-quality versions. The upholstery core of modern mattresses is made up of spring cores or foam cores made of latex or polyurethane foams. But there are still numerous alternative upholstery fabrics such as viscose , natural oils or air core cushions. Vegetable and animal upholstery fabrics are increasingly being incorporated into natural mattresses.
A distinction is made between casual and firm upholstery. With the casual upholstery you sink in further and the upholstery adapts to the body shape. If the upholstery is tightly stretched, the cover is firmly connected to the upholstery and therefore the "sinking depth" is less and the surface remains taut and smooth, for example with car seats . The firmness of mattresses is given in degrees of hardness. The greater the degree of hardness, the better its padding is suitable for people with a high body weight.
Another unit of measurement for the strength of upholstery is the volume weight . This is given in the unit kg / m³ and provides information about how heavy the padding material used is per cubic meter. The higher the density, the higher the cost of materials and consequently the higher the performance of the upholstery.