Argentina's INTI develops felting machine for wool

31 Jul '13

2 min read

The National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI) of Argentina, has developed a simple engineering machine that can produce sheet of felt, a type of non-woven cloth made from fibers that can be made of wool from sheep and camel.

The interdisciplinary group of professionals from INTI afieltradora (Felt unit) developed the semi-industrial machine that has the distinction of being the first ever made infiltrator table on a national level with reduced manufacturing costs.

The INTI centers, Industrial Design, Mechanical and INTI- regional center, INTI-Cordoba were the institutions that initiated the development of the machine.

The infiltrator table allows automation of felting technique in the stages where the work becomes repetitive, using different types of fibers (including wool fibers) for obtaining inputs for felt products.

Another advantage of the machine is that it substantially reduces the time for felting relative to the traditional technique.

The project was undertaken to add value to the wool industry taking advantages of the process of combing wool which discards fiber known as Blousse, a material which is used to felt cloths.

With this framework, the Industrial Design Centre worked on investigating the applications of the material and transferred knowledge through training to 385 entrepreneurs from different cities.

The Industrial Design Centre also formed a felting demonstration unit intended to provide technical support to enterprises working with felt in different parts of the country, to promote the transfer of skills and technologies to the process of felting.

The centre in coordination with the INTI-Cordoba Mechanics worked on the development of the machine and manufactured a prototype which is currently being evaluated in order to optimize performance.

The prototype of the machine consists of an infiltrator table working on electricity which mimics the manual technique of felting.

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