Polyester Fiber, or poly-fill, is the most commonly used filling in pet bed stuffing. This cushion filling is lightweight, the most affordable and non-allergenic. It is a synthetic man-made fiber made from polyester waste polymerized under high temperature and pressure. To put it simply, recycled water bottles are processed into polyester fiber, so polyester fiber is an eco-friendly material.
Perhaps you have also heard about virgin poly-fiber, also known as VF. VF is made directly from PTA. Compared to polyester fiber, VF is not green and the purchasing price is 1.5 times the price of common fiberfill. 98.3% of pet suppliers choose eco-friendly polyester staple fiber as their pet bed filling.

In this article, we only cover polyester staple fiber. I hope this article will help pet startup companies to get a thorough understanding from zero to one. This article will be very tedious since it requires a detailed description of the composition of the polyester fiber. If you like to quickly learn about this popular stuffing and its filling amount, please jump to read the third section of this article directly.

Learning about Polyester Fiber from the Product Name

“3 Dimensional Polyester Staple Fiber Hollow Conjugated Siliconized Fiber”. When you first see this product name you may be shocked, aren’t we talking about stuffing—polyester staple fiber? Why are we in a physics class? Do not be afraid. It is like Picasso’s full name is Pablo Ruiz Picasso. Polyester staple fiber also has its own family name. Let’s break this name down and explain it one by one, so you’ll have a better idea of which polyester staple fiber to choose when negotiating with your pet product supplier.

1. 2D Fiber VS 3D Fiber

In shape, polyester staple fibers are classified into two classes:

• 2-dimensional polyester staple fibers ( 2D polyester staple fibers )
• 3-dimensional polyester staple fibers ( 3D polyester staple fibers )

2D staple fibers have a curled shape like up and down waves, while 3d fibers are spring-like spirals. Generally speaking, 3D are more stress-resistant than 2D and less easily deformed. The earliest polyester staple fiber is only 2D. As people’s increasing demand, 2D has been not to meet the needs of emerging products, so there is also the emergence of 3D.

2. What is the “Hollow” Meaning?

Hollow is a state which describes the internal structure of the fiber. The hollow structure can reduce the weight of the fiber by 20%, and the hollow interior contains still air. Thus, the fabric is lighter and yet 65% warmer than homogeneous fabrics. It is more comfortable, easier to see through and more fresh and breathable.

Besides hollow fiber, there is also solid fiber, which is rarely used in dog cushions and pet beds. So, we do not discuss it in detail.

3. What are “Conjugated” and “Siliconized”?

If you want to know what “Conjugated” is, you must first understand what “Siliconized” is. The term “Siliconized” also implies the existence of “Non-Siliconized”. When fibers are first produced, they are raw and rough to the touch. To ensure easy manufacturing and to enhance the customer’s experience, we add silicone oil to the fibers to make them more smooth.

In other words, the fabric softener is added to the laundry. Conjugated indicates that the fiber has more than one component, such as siliconized fiber, or antibacterial fiber.

Learning about Polyester Fiber from the Textile Unit

When you try to figure out the price of polyester fiber from the polyester fiber suppliers, you will get confused about more than fifty choices:

7D*32mm, 7D*64mm, 1.5D*15mm, 6D*38mm…

What is the connection between these fifty choices? What do the numbers and letters mean? This is the same as the phone has different capacity, size, model, so does polyester fiber. It also has size grams and other differences.

4. What is the”Denier”?

D is the abbreviation for Denier, the unit of measure for the fibre weight. It is not identical to the D in “dimensional”. Denier is the mass in grams per 9000 metres of fiber. The common calculations are as follows:

1 denier= 1 g / 9000 m

The lower the denier, the finer the fiber. Conversely, the higher the denier, the thinner the fiber. Commonly used in throwing pillows are 15D, 1.5D, 3D polyester fiber. In dog mattresses, 7D and 15D are popularly used.

5. Cut Length

Fiber is very long when it is freshly produced. This affects the efficiency of workers or machines to fill cushions, dog beds or stuffed toys. I’m sure you can’t eat a meter of noodles in one bite, just kidding. Depending on what kind of length fiberfill fibers are desired, the polyester filaments will be cut to achieve the correct result.

The common length of daily filling fiber is 32mm, 51mm, 64mm. 32mm is suitable for use with the cotton filling machine, and 51mm is also basically applicable. 64mm requires workers to manually stuff cotton, more usually used in winter jackets.

6. Colored Polyester Fiber

When doing market research, you will find that the polyester filler is not only white but also green, brown or black. White polyester fibers are usually made by recycling transparent water bottles. While brown and other colored fibers are mixed with some other plastic products to make.

Compared to white polyester fiber, the purchasing cost of colored fiber can be 20% lower. It is generally used in car interior decoration that requires the intensive use of padding. Also, many very cheap dog beds can also be seen in this filling. ( Don’t get me wrong. The production of this type of fiber is the same as the other poly filler.) But, dog beds stuffed with this colored polyester fiberfill are not compressible when packed. Once compressed, it destroys the full shape of the pet bed and the entire bed flattens out when the packaging is removed.

Polyester Filling Fiber Quality Comparison

The consumer affordability of your end market customers, the number of pet bed orders, and your choice of air or sea freight for shipping. These all play a role in what grade of dog bed fiber you choose. If your consumers are willing to pay a high price to get quality sleep for their pets, the poly filling must be good enough to rebound.

Otherwise, it won’t take a long time for the pet bed will be flattened and lose its shape relatively quickly. If you still have doubts about the poly filling differences, I recommend that you buy two dog beds on Amazon with the same size and different prices. It will be easy to understand the cause of the poor dog bed. Below is a comparison of calming pet beds on the market.

7. The Amount of Poly-fill & Its Standard in the Dog Bed

With too Much polyester fiber filling, the dog bed will lose the fluffy sleeping comfort. Filling too little, not only looks cheap, light cats lying on it are at risk of directly flattening the cat bed. Is there a standard for the amount of poly filling for a normal pet bed? What specs of poly filler are most commonly used?

We have listed some of the regular size bed poly filling standards and their standard amount.

The above is the amount of poly-filling and its specifications for the most popular shaggy round pet bed. It is important to note that a dog cushion with this amount of filling is not compressible. If it is compressed with this amount of padding, the dog cushion may only be 70% of the original size after unpacking. Please message us for a Guide of the Standard of Poly Filling Amount of Dog Bed.

For different poly staple fiber manufacturers, the production process or production standards are different. The poly filler with the same spec from different manufacturers, its price and actual use may be very different.

The purchase price of 15D*51mm 3D polyester fiber we used compared to other manufacturers, the cost of procurement of 30% higher. The vacuum compression size of the dog bed can be compressed to 10% of the original size and up to 90 days of compression time. After 90 days of unpacking, the dog bed with a little patting can still be restored to 98% of the original size.

Other dog beds can only barely compress to 50% of the original size, and the compression time is not longer than 50 days. After unpacking and tapping can only be restored to 80% of the original size.

For all types of end markets, there can be more than 10+ filling alternatives just for the polyester fiber filled pet bed. If you eager to develop your pet business but don’t want to spend too much time searching for complicated and tedious information, you can always choose Kiss Pet Baby, a professional pet bed manufacturer. Our professional customer service can help you with all your questions about pet beds. We are honoured to have the privilege to be a stepping stone for your success.

Starting a business is risky and you need to have knowledge of every detail of the pet product’s composition. If there is anything else you would like to know about pet bed products, feel free to leave a comment below.

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