Usually, people refer to synthetic leather other than genuine leather, such as PVC leather and PU leather, as artificial leather or anti-leather. PVC leather and PU leather are both polyvinyl chloride (a type of plastic), but the production processes of these two products are different.
During the production process of PVC leather, the plastic particles must be melted and stirred into a paste, and then evenly coated on the T/C knitted fabric base according to the required thickness, and then enter the foaming furnace for foaming, so that it has the flexibility to adapt to the production and processing of various different products and different requirements. At the same time, it is surface treated (dyeing, embossing, polishing, matte, grinding and raising, etc., mainly in accordance with the specific product requirements).
PU leather is more complicated in the production process than PVC leather, because the base fabric of PU leather is a white canvas PU leather material with good compressive strength. In addition to being coated on the top of the base fabric, the base fabric can also be included in it, so that the base fabric cannot be appreciated outside. The physical properties of PU leather are better than those of PVC leather. It is resistant to bumps, has good softness, high compressive strength, and has air permeability (PVC leather does not have it).
The texture of PVC leather is formed by pressing a steel texture roller; the texture of PU leather is first pressed on the surface of the semi-finished leather with a kind of patterned paper, and then the paper leather is separated after cooling and the surface is treated.
The price of PU leather is more than twice that of PVC leather, and the price of some special PU leather is 2-3 times higher than that of PVC leather. Generally, the patterned paper required for PU leather can only be used 4-5 times before it is scrapped; the service life of the texture roller is long, so the cost of PU leather is higher than that of PVC leather; the application range of these two materials is also correspondingly different.