**1. Introduction**

Textile materials can be joined by sewing, fusing, and welding. Sewing is the oldest and also today most popular technology for joining the textile materials, when minimum two textile components are join together to reach the new two‐ or three‐dimensional shape of a textile product. Irrespective, if sewing is made by hand or sewing machine, the sewing thread and needle is needed to design, stitches, and seams. As the first application of permanently seamless connection of textile components can be considered the fusing of the fusible interfacing on backside of fabric to achieve more stiff part of a garment. Later, the welding technologies have become a significant competition to the sewing technologies. The first attempt of joining the textile materials in terms of seams without the sewing threads was done by hot air/wedge welding. That technology presents a milestone in manufacturing of seamless textile products because there were no yarn breakages during the sewing, no missed stitches, and seam puckering on produced textile products [1–4].

**•** heating elements; they can be in the form of a narrow bar, a wide rectangular platen or

Applying Heat for Joining Textile Materials http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/64309/ 219

Different applications require different types of equipment; therefore, a variety of equipment

According to the above‐mentioned backgrounds, the techniques for assembling the textiles using heat can be grouped into the following technologies: fusing, hot air/wedge welding, and

Fusing technologies were firstly introduced bonding technologies for joining the textile materials using heat. The fused panel arises during the fusing process as a joined composite between the fabrics and fusible interlining. During the fusing process, the fabric and fusible interlining are in contact with the heating elements. The applied pressure at the end of the fusing process provides the penetration of the thermoplastic adhesive into the fabric. The right balance among fusing temperature, time, and pressure is very important for the end quality of a fused joint between the fabric and fusible interring. Moreover, it also depends on the construction and raw material of the shell fabric as well as on the type and manner of coating the thermoplastic adhesive. The properties of a fused panel have specific values with respect

**•** process control elements for controlling the fusing/welding procedures.

shaped iron, or a roller,

can be used, such as [1, 7]:

**•** continuous fusing machines,

**•** flat‐bed press,

ironing.

**•** pressure application method, and

**•** stationary press with molded buck/mold/form,

**•** rotary machines with hot air or wedge.

**Figure 1.** Schematic presentation of a fused panel.

**2.1. Fusing technologies**

The wider use of welding technologies for textile applications can be traced from new millennium. First welding machines for commercial production of garments and technical textiles appeared in that time [5]. Since then welding has become widely used techniques for textile products, where we require special features and high functional utility, which include water permeability, resistance to pressure, wear and tear of seams, air permeability, and aesthetic appearance. In this group of textile, products are inflatable boats, protective and sports clothing, tents, truck awnings, bag filters, inflatable toys, etc. Hot air and wedge, ultrasonic, laser, and radio frequency technology can create the welded area [6, 7]. In compar‐ ison, the fusing technologies were first introduced on large scale in the 1950s and it became an integral part of clothing technology [4]. The highest development level of fusing the interning on textile materials has been detected at the end of the previous century, when a number of new types of fusible interlining and fusing machines were developed.

This chapter gives an overview of the basic principles of hot air/wedge and fusing technology as the most used seamless technologies. The theoretical background and fundamental working principles of both technologies is presented. The thermoplastic adhesives and textile substrates for fusible interlinings and welding tapes is discussed in a separate subchapter. Furthermore, the fusing/welding methods and their parameters in connection with the evaluation of end quality of fused/welded panels are presented with latest scientific findings. The advantages and disadvantages of the presented techniques using the real examples is discussed together with the certain application areas in terms of influences of fusing parameters on fused panel properties, properties of hot air welded seams, and e‐textile transmission lines.
