FIberglass Woven Fabrics

Fiberglass Woven fabrics are produced by interlacing glass fibers in a regular pattern or weave style. As a result, weave controls a fabric’s stability, conformability to shape, surface characteristics, and fiberglass chopped strand mat, in many cases, the overall appearance for your part. And to fully understand the value that weaves deliver, we need to understand some fabric basics.

Filament vs. Fiber

Filament is a single strand of reinforcement. Thousands of filaments bundled together, running straight and parallel to one another, make up a fiber. For most reinforcements, like fiberglass, this is referred to as roving. In the case of carbon fiber, it is usually referred to as tow. Tow is measured in “K,” or thousands. For example, a 3K fabric means there are 3,000 filaments per fiber tow.

If the filaments of a fabric are twisted together, rather than running straight and parallel, they are referred to as a yarn. If yarn is used to produce fabric, it is referred to as cloth.

Warp vs. Fill

If you look at a roll of fabric, some of the fibers run in the direction of the roll and are continuous for the entire length of the roll. These fibers are known as the warp, and are often referred to as ends. The shorter fibers that run crosswise along the width of the fabric are known as fill and are referred to aspicks.

Fabric Count

Fabric count refers to the number of warp (ends) and fill (picks) fibers per inch. For example, a 24 x 22 fabric has 24 ends in every inch of fill direction and 22 picks in every inch of warp direction. Note that you count warp fibers in the fill direction and fill fibers in the warp direction.