While everyone wants a relatively lint free wiper it varies from industry and application, for example here are a few industries high-lighted, but there are many, many more applications:

Industrial Applications:  People who service hydraulic equipment, tow motors, etc., need a relatively lint free wiper because the lint can get into the hydraulic fluid and clog the filter.  People who clean the inside of airplane fuel tanks need a very lint free wiper, in fact, many of these products are made and packaged in Cleanrooms under Cleanroom conditions.

Nuclear Power Plants:  These plants use a lot of stainless steel.  Chlorine attacks stainless steel, so they cannot use a product which has been washed and bleached with chlorine.  Products washed for this industry need to be processed with hydrogen peroxide as a bleaching agent so no chlorine ions are left in the product.

Paint Industry:  This industry favors knits, mostly cotton, mostly jersey or light weight interlock constructions.  The cloth must be soft and supple as it is often used to apply paint to window pane sides and other hard to reach areas where they cannot get a brush.  Industry favors white or unbleached cloth so if they use solvents there will be no color bleed onto their work.    Today, much of the industry is moving from solvent and oil based paints to water based Latex paints.  These paints need a cloth with high cotton content to absorb.  Agricultural fibers, cotton, rayon (made from trees), and paper are hollow fibers and absorb where synthetic fabrics made from nylon, rayon, acrylic, and polyester are solid and do not absorb.  Exception:  Hydrocarbons have an affinity for other hydrocarbons, so a polyester rag will absorb gasoline, kerosene, fuel oil, and alcohol.

Printing Industry:  Here you need to define the type of printing.  It usually involves solvents, so the product needs to be lint free and soft so it will not scratch the plate.  Various products are currently in use; rental shop towels, cotton knits, needled cotton pads made by Kendall, hydroentangled nonwovens like C-WIPES  Much of what is in use depends on the person doing the printing, his age, and how he was trained.  Older individuals seem to favor cloth and younger individuals seem to favor nonwovens.  If the operation is a newspaper using old technology line - o type, then cloth is necessary.  If new technology using plastic plates that are photographically etched then more people use the nonwoven fabric.

Auto body:  This is a particularly thorny issue because of the way cars are being painted has changed drastically in the last few years and is continuing to evolve.  Paint rooms now cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and are temperature and humidity controlled.  Static electricity is now carefully monitored in many areas.  The car manufacturers, Ford, GM, Chrysler, and Honda use state of the art Cleanroom operations and attach electric charges to the cars that match the charge of the paint spraying from the gun head.  Remember your physics, like ions are attracted to like ions, so in effect the paint leaps from the gun head to the car body because both have the same charge.  In these operations, the quality and cleanliness of the wiper is critical.  It cannot generate any static electricity or the whole ion concept is out the window.  The ideal product is soft, very lint free and free from static electricity, plus it must absorb paint well, such as PURITY WIPES.

In the auto body after market, it depends on how the shop applies paint, what type of paint they use, and how they prep the car before they paint.  Several products are used; tack rags or cloth, which is cheesecloth fabric treated with a tackafier that attracts dirt and dust.  Some shops use a knit rag with solvent for the same application.  Others use a dry prep wipe and at this stage several favor nonwovens ranging from washed white knits (KNW1B) to heavy duty hydroentangled fabrics, such as C-WIPES.  After the car has been painted some shops go back over the paint with a soft knitted cloth or a nonwoven fabric.