What is a Laminate?

A laminate is a material that can be constructed by uniting two or more layers of material. The various layers that make the laminate can be similar or different materials: plastic netting, plastic films, nonwovens, paper, etc. Unless one of the fabrics develops adhesive properties in certain conditions, an additional medium is necessary to secure the bonding between the layers.

What is a Laminated Composite?

A laminated composite is a finished material made from a composite of a thermally activated adhesive net and a nonwoven. SWM manufactures Conwed™ and  Delstar™ Lamination Composite (formerly LAMINET®) that adds strength to the nonwoven while it minimizes stretch and instability. The resulting composite offers the performance of much heavier nonwovens and ensures consistency, appearance, and strength to meet strict product requirements.

Our Advanced Materials for Diverse, Flexible & Strong Composites

SWM designs netting configurations that enable lamination and bonding to many different materials and substrates.  Whether it is film, paper, foam, foil, nonwoven or any other fabric, our team can customize the precise chemical formulation to create the desired composite.  From industrial and consumer wipes, to hygiene, medical, cleaning and automotive products, our netting delivers diverse performance capabilities in composite form.

Our co-extrusion technology, for example, helps our customers design the most advanced, flexible and strong composites. Co-extrusion is a multi-layer extruded netting than can be subsequently oriented where different polymers can form different layers on the same netting configuration. It is a square netting construction and SWM has the ability to build netting with A/B, A/B/A, and A/B/C layer combinations.

Manufacturers, OEMs, and converters can create netting composites through extrusion coating, extrusion lamination, thermal lamination, ultrasonic welding, wet and dry adhesive lamination, and diverse nonwoven processes.  In many cases, incorporating netting helps reduce cost, weight, height, thickness, and overall size of products to save energy, material, and production process time.

Features, benefits and performance characteristics:

• Various material, adhesive, and nonwoven configurations to provide different and specific performance capabilities
• Superior breathability
• Highly absorbent
• Printable properties
• Strong and consistent
• Minimum stretch
• Excellent recovery
• Penetration resistant
• Greater staple/stitch holding power
• Tear resistant
• Improved appearance
• Light-weight composite
• Equal strength to heavier nonwovens

A polymer film can be extruded directly onto the substrate to provide a bonding layer (extrusion lamination) or an impervious coating (extrusion coating). SWM plastic netting can be trapped between the substrate layer and the extruded film layer to significantly increase the tensile strength of the final product. Delstar™ Lamination Composite (formerly LAMINET®) is a finished composite of a thermally activated adhesive net and a nonwoven. Our product portfolio is available in various netting, adhesive and nonwoven configurations to provide a variety of specific performance capabilities​.