After looking at improvements in yarn technology, this time we look at developments in how artificial turf is tufted and see if there has been real innovation or smaller marginal improvements.
The original aim, back in the 60’s, was to produce an artificial grass surface that sport could be played on. This was, initially, for American Football and hockey, but in the late 90’s, thanks to improvements in yarn and product innovations, longer pile surfaces for football and rugby became possible. Surprisingly, the production methods remained largely the same.
The first artificial turfs were manufactured using either a knitted or woven process. This provided a very secure turf system with excellent fibre lock. It was especially popular for hockey due to the short pile length and non-directional fibre. However, the production process was slow and very expensive. To meet demands a lower cost production method was needed, and this led to the adoption of tufting as the preferred option.
Tufting was already an established way to make lower cost carpets and converting a tufting machine to work with longer artificial grass fibres, proved very easy. In fact, many machines, used by manufacturers around Europe and America, started as regular carpet tufters, before being converted to make artificial grass.
In the last few years, there have been technical improvements in the tufting equipment, with new machines working faster; with increased reliability through computer controls. This has helped make the overall tufting process slightly less labour dependent and much more efficient, faster, and cost effective.
Key efficiencies in working methods have also made an impact on synthetic turf. This has helped keep production costs down but is less innovation and more tweaking for marginal gains.
Some producers have looked again at other production methods, which has seen a return to woven turf, as an option. The benefits are supposedly more upright fibres, but this comes at a high cost. Focused marketing has seen woven turf gain popularity in higher profile stadium pitches, but the overall performance does not seem any more popular with professional players than good quality, tufted artificial turf.
Different styles of tufting have been tried, from the zig-zag stitch pattern, to close adjacent rows of stitches then a wider gap before the next double row of stitches. Again, clever marketing promotes this as offering a more natural appearance and better performance, but in reality is just another tweak.
Artificial turf has improved undoubtedly through being manufactured on better machinery, rather than any radical changes in the way it is actually made. The focus has been less innovation and more tweaking.
Next time, we will look at how artificial turf is backed, and see some real innovation.
