Fabric Club Of BD: History of Textiles & Tertiary Motions on loom

History of Textiles & Tertiary Motions on loom

Labels: Weaving Manufacturing Technology | at 10/27/2010 01:01:00 PM

The weaving is a process of formation of fabric with interlacement of two or more sets of yarns using a stable machine called loom. Human beings have started using the woven fabrics since the drawn of history. If we exclude the stone-age period, we may conveniently say the history of civilization is also, to some extent, the history of weaving. Aitken says there is evidence that the Egyptians made woven fabrics over 6000 years ago. Though primitive civilizations used coarser threads to make fabrics which were crude and coarse, there are references of fine fabrics made from filament of silk in China. Silk was one of the most important products in China 4000 years ago.

Earlier version of power-loom was run by two men. Fortunately steam power was available by 1765. Soon power-loom were driven by steam and most of the wooden parts were replaced with iron. After the steam engine and cast iron in early 1800, great attention was paid to increasing productivity of the machine. To help achieve the increase in productivity, William Radeliffe patented a dressing frame in 1803 for sizing and drying the warp threads prior to winding on to a weavers beam. Fast development in the loom took place and by 1821 there were over 50,000 looms in operation in some 32 mills in the north of England. In just over 10 years from that date, the number had increased to some 1, 00,000 and the basic loom had almost developed to the machine we know today. Also between 1819 and 1842 the average speed of the power-loom had increased from 60 to 140 picks per minute with the rise on productivity, as a result England became world's richest industrial power.

Traditional looms then were stopped every few minutes in order to replace the empty weft pirns or cop in the shuttle and this limited the number of looms, a weaver could operate to about four. James Northrop, an English man who immigrated to America and worked for the Draper Corporation, completed an automatic weft transfer system which replaced the weft pirn in the shuttle without slowing or stopping the loom in 1889. This mechanism enabled the weaver to tend 16 looms. The Northrop Automatic looms quickly came to use in America, so that by 1930, 90% of the American looms were automatic compared with only 5% in Britain.

Similar developments took place elsewhere also, Ruti, a major loom maker of Switzerland manufactured automatic bobbin changing Northrop loom in 1898. In Japan also, Toyoda, Sakamoto, Tsudakoma, etc also developed shuttle looms with automatic weft transfer. After World War II, more productivity and efficiency were essential to overcome increasing labor costs in Western countries. It was also realized that more productivity is the key to reducing manufacturing costs of the loom. All attempts were concentrated to studying various factors affecting speed of the loom and the loom with higher speed were made available.

Chronological background of auxiliary motions in brief:-

· The automatic loom stopping system was invented by R. Miller in England in 1796. The loom was automatically stopped when a short pick occurred.

· In 1894 Northrop devised a means for automatic weft replenishment without stopping the loom which was called automatic loom.

· In 1786 Dr. Cartwright foresaw the need of a warp stop motion. And the warp stop motion was invented by other parties afterward. But no satisfactory and commercially successful method of stopping the loom on the breakage of a warp thread has been developed until 1900.

· In early 1900’s, the warp stop motion was successfully introduced in Northrop looms.

· The first shuttle change motion enabling weft threads of different colors to be inserted was constructed by J. P. Reid and T. Johnson in 1835.

· The protector motion was first introduced in a loom manufactured by Richard Roberts in 1830.

· The first self acting loom temple was invented by Ira Draper and was introduced in Northrop Draper Loom.

There are three types of weaving loom motions. These are Primary, Secondary & Tertiary motion. Primary & Secondary are the basic motion of any loom. But there are various types of tertiary motion which is generally depend on the loom type. For produce the good quality fabric loom this tertiary motion is very important. All the loom stop motion (warp stop, weft stop, warp protector etc) & others important auxiliary mechanism (temple, break, selvedge etc) includes in tertiary motion.

The invention of various shedding, picking, beating, let-off and take up mechanism help to increase productivity undoubtedly. But they all depend upon the tertiary mechanisms. Besides the innovation of different tertiary mechanisms make the task easier. Quality control is even better than the earlier. The productivity increases as well as the efficiency and accuracy.

The importance of tertiary motion is given below;

· To minimize warp breakage fabric fault.

· To produce the better quality fabric.

· To minimize the filling yarn breakage.

· To protect the reed & warp.

· To maintain the warp & weft tension.

· To remove the weft mixing & replenishment fault.

· To increase production efficiency & accuracy.

Advantages of the auxiliary mechanism are given in below;

· A drop wire assembly, one wire for warp yarn, to stop the machine when a warp end is slack or broken.

· A tension sensing and compensating whip roll assembly to maintain tension in warp sheet.

· A mechanism to stop the machine when a filling yarn breaks.