• An abrasive textile is used to finish a work piece through rubbing the surface of the work piece.
• Abrasives are primarily used in industrial applications like
  1. Grinding,
  2. Polishing,
  3. Buffing,
  4. Honing,
  5. Cutting,
  6. Smoothening etc.
• The coated abrasives are classified into two broad categories:
  1. Woven coated abrasives and
  2. Non-woven coated abrasives.

Product characteristics:

• Generally the coated abrasive cloths are made of cotton, polyester and polyester blends.
• These raw materials are mainly used to obtain a suitable coated abrasive backing.
•  The main characteristics which are looked by the users are the weight, tensile strength and flexibility.
• The type of backing cloth used is
  1. Jeans cloth called ―J weight cloth,
  2. Drills cloth called ―X weight cloth and
  3. Sateen called ―S weight cloth.
• Comparison of characteristics of  Jeans cloth & drills cloth are that
  1. Jeans cloth are lighter and more flexible, while
  2. Drills cloth is stronger
• The above mentioned both clothed are used in the manufacturing of coated abrasives to work under medium and heavy duty pressures.
  1. The drill cloth is having two sides which are dissimilar from one other.
  2. One side this cloth comprises of a net of fine lining and this side is called drilled side of the cloth.
• The other side of the cloth is called the coating side.
• Weight of the three backing cloth are:
  
  

  CLOTH	WEIGHT(GSM)
  "J" weight cloth	130-195
  "X" weight cloth	200-245
  "Y" weight cloth	270-330

• The non-woven coated abrasives are made from abrasive grade fibres and made available for usage in various sizes and forms.

Raw materials and machinery

• The backing cloth is made from polyester, rayon and cotton fibres.
• The fabrics are generally woven at 90 degrees to each other; another method of manufacturing backing cloth is stitching together an overlay of fibre placed 90 degrees to each other.
• The key machinery used for manufacture of backing cloth is rapier looms.
• The non-woven abrasives are manufactured using the needle punching process on needle looms.

Technology

• Weaving
• Nonwoven (needle punching)