Self-crimp polyester yarns were manufactured using a conjugated spinning process involving two parallel but attached fibers with different shrinkage properties. A theoretical model proposed by Denton proved to be very useful for predicting crimp potential. Maintaining identical or very similar melt viscosities of the two components was demonstrated to be very critical for obtaining a straight interface and eliminating the dog-legging problem. The crimp tests illustrate that the triangular shapes are superior to the round cross section. The optimum volume ratio for making a self-crimp bicomponent skein is 50/50. Moreover, the optimal fiber thickness is 8 denier per filament. Finally, this study found that the combination of PET/PTT outperformed that of PET/PBT and PET/CD in terms of crimp potential, crimp stability, and elastic recovery. This phenomenon is primarily attributed to the markedly different thermal shrinkages of PET and PTT. (c) 2005 Society of Plastics Engineers.