page_title: Metallic fiber
section_title: Types of metallic fiber products
hierarchical_section_title: Metallic fiber / Types of metallic fiber products
caption_attribution_description: English: Short fibers
context_page_description: Metallic fibers are manufactured fibers composed of metal, metallic alloys, plastic-coated metal, metal-coated plastic, or a core completely covered by metal.
  Having their origin in textile and clothing applications, gold and silver fibers have been used since ancient times as yarns for fabric decoration. More recently, aluminum yarns, aluminized plastic yarns, and aluminized nylon yarns have replaced gold and silver.
  Today's metal fiber industry mainly offers fibers in stainless steel, nickel, titanium, copper and aluminum for various applications. Metallic filaments can be coated with transparent films to minimize tarnishing.
  Metal fiber may also be shaved from wire, shaven from foil, bundle drawn from larger diameter wire, machined from an ingot, cast from molten metal, or grown around a seed.
context_section_description: Sintered media 
  
  metal fibers are converted into fiber media either as non-woven fleece or sintered structures composed of fibers ranging from 1.5 to 80 μm in diameter. These porous metal fiber media have been used for their uniqueness in highly demanding applications. The benefit of having the combination of an outstanding permeable material (porosities up to 90% for sintered and up to 99% for non-woven structures) combined with high corrosion and temperature resistance is highly valued. The sintered porous structure has no binder as the individual fibers are strongly bonded together by inter-metallic diffusion bonding. 3D sintered structures have also become a standard product. Some of the latest developments are relate to filtration media using a combination of metallic and non-metallic fibers, allowing the best of both worlds. 
  Short fibers 
  A specially designed process allows the production of individual powder-like metal fibers known as short fibers with a length over diameter (L/D) range of 100. These short fibers can be used as such or in combination with metal powders to produce sintered filtration structures with ultra-high levels of filtration while allowing unique levels of permeability. 
  Polymer pellets 
  Other metal fiber products are polymer pellets or grains composed out of metal fibers. Several bundles of fibers are glued together with a variety of sizings and an adequate compatible extrusion coating is applied. After chopping these coated bundles into pellets they can be used as additives in the production of engineered conductive/ shielding plastic pieces by injection molding and extrusion. The unique benefit of metal fibers is the conductive network formation with a relatively limited volume of conductive additives. 
  Non-wovens 
  Non-wovens or felts can be produced with metal fibers, just like with traditional textile fibers. In a very limited number of cases, needle punching can be applied to entangle the fibers and obtain needle-punched felt. 
  Yarns
  A bundle of endless stainless steel fibers can be converted to yarns by textile spinning processes. There are two forms of yarn: one with a low amount of fibers and one with a high amount of fibers. The former, with a number of filaments of around 275, can be converted into a filament yarn by adding twist to the bundle. Bundles with several thousands of fibers are typically used to convert fibers into spun yarn. That can be done by stretch breaking and subsequent traditional yarn spinning technologies. This results in 100% metal yarns. During the spinning process, tows can be blended and blended yarns can also be produced. Blends with cotton, polyester and wool are possible. Subsequently, metal yarns can be further converted into various textile products using textile processes. Knitting (circular, flat, warp) and weaving are possible, as well as braiding. Blended textile products can be obtained by combining metal yarns with other yarns, or by using yarns that have two kinds of fibers inside and hence are already blends by themselves. 
  Electrical cables 
  
  To make cables, two or more filaments are twisted together a number of times. During the process, a cable's torsion and straightness are monitored. The cable can be fine-tuned for a certain application by combining different filament strengths, diameters or the number of twists, or by preforming. 
  Fiber Reinforced Composites 
  Metal fiber can be used as reinforcement fiber for composite materials, improving breaking behavior upon impact and electrical conductivity. Traditional carbon or glass fiber reinforcement fibers have very limited elongation possibilities, which results in a brittle and explosive breaking behavior. Metal fibers act perfectly complementary to this, and can absorb much more energy before breaking. Processing is no different from any other reinforcement fiber for composite material. It is even possible to combine metal fibers with other fibers into a 'hybrid' composite structure, which combines all the benefits of carbon, glass and steel.
caption: Short metal fibers
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