Vacuum bonded non-woven batt

Claim 1

A dense, resilient, non-woven staple polymer fiber batt comprising a plurality of overlayed, relatively thin webs, each of said webs comprising at least first and second staple polymer fiber constituents blended to form a homogeneous intermixture of said fibers, predetermined melting temperature and said second fiber constituent having a relatively high predetermined melting temperature, the fibers of said first fiber constituent being fused by heat to themselves and to the fibers of said second fiber constituent to intimately interconnect and fuse the fibers within the web layers and each of said web layers to adjacent web layers while said web layers are in a vacuum-compressed state, said heat being sufficient to melt the fibers of the first fiber constituent but not high enough to melt the fibers of the second fiber constituent whereby, upon cooling, the fibers of the first fiber constituent retain a plastic memory of the batt in its compressed state to hold the interconnected web layers together at the compressed thickness of the batt, and the fibers of the second fiber constituent retain the plastic memory of said fibers in their non-compressed state and thereby provide substantial resilience to said batt in counteracting compressive forces exerted on said batt by the the fibers of the first fiber constituent.