Textile testing – get a testing service or do it yourself

Why is textile testing important?

The most obvious reason is that allows companies, consumer groups, and the government to make sure textiles are safe, of good quality, and that the customer is getting what they are paying for. Textile products are made around the world and sent to markets around the world.

Testing ensures that something harmful or illegal isn’t slipping through the regulatory cracks. While for companies, there are much more to take into consideration because it refers to commercial benefits, these factors can be summarized as follows:

1. Research work: Test of the textiles helps the authority to decide the next route.
2. Selection of Raw materials: During textiles testing the variation of a fiber or fabric i.e. length, color, fineness (in case of textile fiber), threads per inch, cover factor (in case of textile fabric), is detected properly. Thus proper raw materials are selected properly.
3. Process Control: Certain standard level should be maintained to control the increase of waste, the rise of cost, etc. By textile testing, we can easily detect the faults of machinery and materials during the test of textiles.
4. Process Development: Research institute, pilot plants can achieve process development through testing or exact investigation into better, cheaper and quicker methods.
5. Search for effective productivity: Continuous test of the textile results in an enhanced and efficient output of the production.
6. Specification Test: To meet up the customer requirement, specification is very useful. In this concept, testing plays a vital role.

What are the options?

Now you understand the importance of the testing, and you need to get the test done, there are two solutions: test by yourself or find a testing service:

There are many testing labs offering such service, you tell your requirement, make the payment, you get the testing report, simple, easy.

If you consider doing it yourself, then you head to a much “challenging” way, let’s list out what you will need for this:

• A map: a standard guide you where you go, this is determined by your customer’s needs, for example, if your customer needs to sell their final products to a USA market, then mostly you will need a AATCC standard
• A transportation tool: train, car, bike, for testing, they are instruments
• A driver: People who conduct the testing, who should understand the standard, can operate the instruments, can read the report

Sounds complicated already?

You might just want to close this post and search for a testing service instead.

Hold on, the truth is that, there are still many business owners choose to start a small testing lab for the reasons below:

• Cost: Third-party testing company charge you for each testing requirement, which means, if you have 100 different testing requirement, you pay them 100 times, comparing to one-time payment for instruments, lab setting up fees, and employee salary
• Flexibility: You can schedule your testing plan to meet your customer’s urgent on your own pace
• Efficiency: Even if your customer needs a third-party certification, you can save much more time by testing yourself first, and then reach out for a test report from them.

Sounds good so far, right? Wait for a second, there is still much to clarify before you can make the final decision. Like what else do you need to get the testing done properly? The answer can be summarized as two staff: Apparatus and Materials.

For the apparatus, there are a lot more to cover, but what I want to point out is that a good textile instrument supplier will guide you through the whole process; you will find it less trouble than to figure out all, what you need is tell your requirement, then they will handle the rest.

Ok, you might have a better understanding of the two choices, get a testing service or do the test yourself, and you will tend to think your choice is obvious, let’s get a testing service and pay the money.

While, there is a last vital factor that we need you to take into consideration, doing the test yourself means much more true of your fabric, why saying so? The answer is DATA, data of the whole procedure, not only the final paper let you know pass or failure, but the data that can guide you to improve the quality of your fabric, the more tests you go through, the more data you get, the more competitive your products will become.

Now comes to our conclusion, if you are a small scale fabric manufacturer, and has limited testing needs each year, then choose a third-party testing service shall be a much better choice, but if you are a large manufacturer and has the ambition to be one of the players in the leading textile industry, to become the textile trend leader, and your customers do care about quality and performance and willing to pay a better price for your textile, doing test for you is a tactic choice.

If you are interested to learn more about building up a textile laboratory, you can read this post for more details, Step By Step To Build A Complete Textile Quality Control Laboratory With Zero Foundation