Calendering

The calender consists of several heated, polished rollers arranged one above the other (I, L, F or Z arrangement) between which the fabric is drawn under pressure and heat. Depending on roller type — smooth, engraved or in steel/cotton hardness combination — different effects arise.

Classic calender effects are: smoothing (smooth surface, even thickness), chintzing (extreme gloss via hot, highly polished steel cylinder on cotton), embossing (diamond patterns, leather grain, honeycomb structure), moiréing (moiré cloud patterns by doubling) and friction calendering (high-gloss chintz with different roller speeds).

In the textile industry, fabric width and thickness are also precisely reduced to target dimensions. For screen printing mesh, calendering can reduce thread thickness by 5-50 percent. Engineering-challenging: extremely precise roller gaps (micrometre tolerance) must be maintained simultaneously with maximum fabric width, minimum roller mass and high pressure.