Because of cashmere products’ highpoint andits popularity,some manufacturers often add wool fiber to reduce costs in productionin order to earn high profits.As for normal consumers,it’s hard to indentifythe cashmere and wool effectively.We must rely on the corresponding testinginstitutions.Professionals identify the fiber surface morphology through amicroscope,so the market has the need of cashmere textile organizationsidentifying and supervising cashmere textile effectively.Because the cashmerefiber and wool fiber have the same construction and chemical properties,it’sdifficult to distinguish and identify in general methods such as ordinaryburning method and chemical dissolution method.
Letme introduce the way to identify the cashmere and wool below:
1、 When fiber analysts identify the cashmere and wool by opticalmicroscope,they need to observe two kinds of fiber scale construction andmassive structure to distinguish.The scale thickness on cashmere fiber surfaceis thinner than wool scales,and the scale presents circularity coating on thehair shaft.But wool scale is thicker and mosaic shaped,and the thickness ofscale covering hair shaft of cashmere is smaller than wool.So the hand feelingof cashmere fiber is different from wool fiber:cashmere feels smooth,but woolfeels relatively coarse.In 1983,Kush and Arns observed and found that thethickness of wool end scale edge is obviously bigger than cashmere fiber usingscanning electronic microscope.This is an important discovery.
Afterwards,Wortman continued to compare and observe thescale thickness of 29 fibers including wool,Chinese cashmere,Iraniancashmere,Afghanistan cashmere,Mongolia cashmere and mohair,alpaca,camel hair fibersetc.And he drew a conclusion:If the scale thickness of one fiber is more than0.55 micron,it should be identified as wool;However,the scale thickness ofspecial animal fibers including cashmere should be less than 0.55 micron.Thescale thickness of wool is supposed to be bigger than cashmere fiber,and itprovides strong evidence for those workers who use microscope for fiberanalysis.
2、 Because the cashmere scale is thinner than wool,the light permeabilityof it is better under the microscope. The light permeance and fiber brightness iseven with no shadow feeling and tuber;But the wool scale is thick and the lightpermeance is uneven with multiple shadow feeling and tubers on hair shaft.
3、 Under the microscope the cashmere fiber scale coats hair shaftclosely with small rake angle and smoothness;But wool has big rake anglebecause of thick scales with more tubers on the surface and less smoothness.
4、 The length of cashmere scale is longer with large space.Permutationthickness is smaller than wool,and friction coefficient is low betweenscales.So its fulling capacity after washing is better than wool;Wool ispoorer.
5、 Cashmere fiber hair shaft is even with few torsion anddeformation;But wool fiber hair shaft is uneven with more torsion.
6、 Because positively blased cortical layer presents on the two sides,thecrimpness of cashmere is smaller than wool.
