How is yarn made

About years later, the Saxon wheel was introduced. Operated by a foot pedal, the Saxon wheel allowed both hands the freedom to work the fibers. A number of developments during the eighteenth century further mechanized the spinning process.

In , the flying shuttle was invented by John Kay, followed by Hargreaves' spinning jenny in The jenny featured a series of spindles set in a row, enabling one operator to produce large quantities of yarn. Several years later Richard Arkwright patented the spinning frame, a machine that used a series of rotating rollers to draw out the fibers. A decade later Samule Cromptons' mule machine was invented, which could spin any type of yarn in one continuous operation.

The ring frame was invented in by the American John Thorp and is still widely used today. This system involves hundreds of spindles mounted vertically inside a metal ring. Many natural fibers are now spun by the open-end system, where the fibers are drawn by air into a rapidly rotating cup and pulled out on the other side as a finished yarn.

About 15 different types of fibers are used to make yarn. These fibers fall into two categories, natural and synthetic. Natural fibers are those that are obtained from a plant or an animal and are mainly used in weaving textiles. The most abundant and commonly used plant fiber is cotton, gathered from the cotton boil or seed pod when it is mature.

In fact, cotton is the best-selling fiber in America, outselling all synthetic fibers combined. Fibers taken from the plant leaf or stern are generally used for rope. Other plant fibers include acetate made from wood pulp or cotton linters and linen, made from flax, a vegetable fiber. Animal fibers include wool, made from sheep hair, and mohair, made from angora goats and rabbits.

Silk is a protein extruded in long, continuous strands by the silkworm as it weaves its cocoon. Synthetic fibers are made by forcing a thick solution of polymerized chemicals through spinneret nozzles and hardening the resulting filament in a chemical bath.

These include acrylic, nylon, polyester, polyolefin, rayon, spandex, and triacetate. Some of these fibers have similar characteristics to the natural fibers without the shrinkage problems.

Other fibers have special properties for specific applications. Fibers are shipped in bales, which are opened by hand or machine. The picker loosens and separates the lumps of fiber and also cleans the fiber if necessary. The carding machine separates the fibers and pulls them into somewhat parallel form. The thin web of fibers formed then passes through a funnel-shaped device that produces a ropelike strand of parallel fibers.

Rollers elongate the strand, called a sliver, into a single more uniform strand that is given a small amount of twist and fed into large cans. There are three major spinning processes: cotton, worsted or long-staple, or wool. Synthetic staple fibers can be made with any of these processes. Since more yarn is produced with the cotton process than the other two, its manufacture is described below. Automation has made achieving quality easier, with electronics controlling operations, temperatures, speeds, twists, and efficiency.

The American Society for Testing of Materials has also established standardized methods for determining such properties as drawforce, bulk, and shrinkage. Spinning systems and yarn manufacturing machinery will continue to become more automated and will be integrated as part of a manufacturing unit rather than as a separate process.

Spinning machines have already been developed that combine carding and drawing functions. Production rates will increase by orders of magnitude as machines become available with even more spindles. Robot-controlled equipment will become standard. Domestic yarn producers will continue to be threatened by competition from Asian countries, as these countries continue to buy the latest textile machinery technology.

The textile industry is also forming unique partnerships. The American Textile Partnership is a collaborative research and development program among industry, government, and academia aimed at strengthening the competitiveness of the U. In other words, twisting brings strength to the yarn and the end fabric as a result.

Yarn twisting impacts the performance characteristics of the individual fibres and makes the fabric stronger, more resistant to wrinkles and less susceptible to piling. If you add less twist, then the yarn is more difficult to work with and can break easily. The strength of the yarn is important, as this it a factor of how successful a fabric is or not. What is spun and filament yarn?

These are types of yarn. Filament indicates mainly man-made, synthetic fibres; from natural fibres only silk can be characterised as filament. Spun silk, despite being the literal short end of the silk fibre, it has still all the characteristics of filament or reeled silk and the same advantages. Spun silk can be knitted into three structures: jersey, interlock and rib. When compared to knitted cotton, spun silk is shown to be superior. It has higher wicking tendency than cotton, especially the interlock knitted silk because of its structure.

Knitted silk also provides better thermal insulation and higher abrasion resistance than cotton knitted silk is stronger than knitted cotton. While both silk and cotton have relatively the same thickness, ribbed silk is thicker, due to its structure.

At Patra Silk we decided to combine the advantages of silk and cotton yarns into a fabric that is durable, soft and warm. The result is our nightwear range which is made from silk and cotton knitted together. Yarn is a length of fibres. The thread that is used for embroidery or in sewing machines, as well as yarn commonly known as balls-of-wool used in crafts such as knitting or crocheting, are long lengths that are bought as yarns.

The alternative would be a yarn which is then knitted or woven into a fabric. The textile is then bought as fabric, in lengths, rather than the yarn itself being purchased separately. This second description is the one that we will explore further in this post. Yarn can be made from such a variety of different fibres.

This includes both natural and synthetic fibres. The most common plant fibre is cotton, however, you can also use other natural fibres such as bamboo. Alongside cotton, the synthetic polyester fibre makes up the two most commonly used fibres. Animal fibres are also often used, such as wool, harvested from sheep, as well as cashmere harvested from goats Angora from rabbits and silk from insect larvae.

Spun yarn is made by twisting staple fibres together in either an S or Z twist, to make a single thread. The process of twisting the fibres together into yarn is called spinning and it was one of the first processed to be industrialised. Spun yarns can contain a single type of fibre, or you can spin various types of fibre together to give you a blend.