CHAPTER V.

CARDING AND COMBING.

CARDING its necessity; its importance and purposes.-Development of the modern card, from Paul, Hargreaves, and Arkwright's improvements.-Description of the roller card.-Summarized statement of its functions; how accomplished. The process examined in its progress.Methods of altering the work.-Extensive use of the roller card.-The self-stripping flat or Wellman card; causes of its invention; improvement in this country.-Dobson and Barlow's Wellman card.-The revolving flat card; recent improvements.-Combination and other cards. -Card clothing; for licker-in, main cylinder, rollers, clearers, and doffer.-Location of cards; adjustment; setting of rollers and clearers. -Double cards.-The Derby doubler.-Breaker and finisher cards.— Light carding. Grinding; by hand; by machine.-Points of card teeth needle point, diamond point, chisel point, and hooked point; how to attain the good points and how to avoid the bad ones.-Differing estimates of the qualities of roller, flat, and revolving flat cards.-Cotton injured by overworking.-Severe treatment in the roller card.-COMBING; indispensable for fine counts.-Invention of the combing machine; description; process of combing.-Improvement of the machine in England; Dobson and Barlow's improvements.-Imb's combing machine for short staple cottons; description.

I

N dealing with the raw material, it will be remembered that it was shown that along with the perfect fibre growing from each seed, there was also a considerable proportion of imperfectly developed fibre which in the process of ginning is detached from the seed and mingles with the mature and perfect portion. Also from causes which need not be inquired into in this place, imperfectly developed, deceased, or insect-damaged seeds are found occurring in the pods. The fibre upon these will have been arrested in its growth, and, like the preceding, be deficient in length, substance, and strength. Instead of being white, cylindrical, and possessing the characteristic twist of the mature

fibre, it will be transparent, flat, and ribbon-like; often short and quite destitute of strength as compared with the well-grown fibre. The coarse impurities, such as foreign matter, vegetable substances, and seed, that have passed the gin, it has been seen, are mostly removed in the stages just described. These, however, have had but little effect upon the class of impurities now requiring notice, and which it is equally imperative to abstract in order to make good, strong, and even yarn. This is effected by the operation of carding.

Carding is probably the most important process in cotton manufacturing. It is the final stage of cleansing, wherein the minutest impurities foreign to the material, and all immature fibre, leaf, and broken seed, ought to be removed. To secure the cleanest yarn, however, requires the selection of cotton as free as possible from immature seed that has passed the gin, and which neither the opening nor scutching process completely abstracts, and which passing into the card gets broken up, when it becomes almost impossible to remove. The particles of these seeds are carried through the succeeding operations without being particularly conspicuous until the spinning process is reached, when in the twining the centrifugal force throws a portion of them off, whilst the remainder is retained on the surface of the yarn held by the short fibres upon them which having been spun into the thread. Sometimes in careless or defective ginning, when the gin blades rub against the grate bars, cotton is seriously injured by becoming "nepped": that is, the fibres are caught and rolled into little balls like grains of sand in magnitude, and which form a great defect in yarns when present in any quantity. Broken seeds and nepped fibres are difficult of removal in any stage of manufacture. In respect of these there is still room for the ingenuity of inventors to effect improvements. In other points, a well-constructed card is a fairly efficient machine.

The second function of the card, and the one which

This is the first
Up to this point

ranks first in importance, is that of arranging the fibres of cotton in approximately parallel order. step in the construction of the thread. every process has simply been preparatory, the fibres composing the lap, the product of the last process, lying across each other in a confused mass. But in carding, the sheet of cotton composing the lap is reduced to a thin cloud-like film or sheet of fibres arranged in almost perfect parallel order. This, as it leaves the doffer cylinder of the card, is drawn together, passed through a cone tube, thence between two pressure rollers, and by means of an ingenious mechanical arrangement it is received and automatically coiled in a can, in the form of a round, soft, untwisted strand of cotton technically called a sliver. It should be observed here that the coiler imparts to the sliver a very small amount of twist, but not so much as to appreciably affect the correctness of the preceding remark.

The modern card, like most other machines, is the outcome of the ingenuity of successive inventors. Its origin must be sought in the remotest times, and in the infancy of the textile industries. Probably its earliest known progenitor is the hand-card of the wool-comber, or the heckle of the flax-dresser, both of these probably suggested by the displayed fingers of the human hand. The growing demand for cotton goods in the early part of the last century induced several persons to attempt the invention of a more expeditious system, but little success for a time attended their efforts. Amongst these may be mentioned Lewis Paul of Birmingham, whose name is of some note as one of the early conjurors, as the first inventors and improvers of cotton machinery were in those days called. One of the most notable names in connection with the first successes in improvements in carding was that of James Hargreaves of Blackburn, the inventor of the spinning jenny. He introduced the stock cards used in the woollen trade into the cotton trade, and improved and adapted them to the manufacture of cotton. The changes he made consisted in

suspending one of the cards, by means of a cord passing over a pulley, from the ceiling of the room in which the carding process was carried on. This card he balanced by

a weight at the other end of the cord, whilst its fellow he fixed upon the stock. By this alteration each stock was made to hold two or three cards, and each carder was enabled to card a greatly increased quantity of cotton. Soon after accomplishing this improvement, or about 1762, Hargreaves was employed by Robert Peel, the founder of the family which afterwards gave the eminent statesman of that name to the country, who resided in close proximity to the inventor at Oswaldtwistle, to make for him a cylindrical carding machine; which he succeeded in doing in a short time. This machine in its structure appears to have been the true parent of the modern card. In its first form it had no doffer arrangement, the carded cotton having to be taken off the cylinder by the hand-card, women being employed to perform the work. The inventor afterwards added a doffer, but it was not a success, consisting merely of a roller carrying a series of tin plates, which being made to revolve, scraped the cotton from the cylinder, and of course injured both the cotton and the cards. Though for a long time lost sight of, this idea has subsequently been rendered a practical success, as may be seen in the revolving doffer, now frequently preferred to the doffer comb. The invention of the latter is attributed to Arkwright. In place of Hargreaves' tin plates and roller, he substituted a thin blade of iron extending across the face of the cylinder. The bottom edge of this blade was serrated, and by means of a crank or eccentric a vertical movement of short range was imparted to it by which it was made to detach the cotton from the cylinder in a uniform and continuous fleece. This was the first doffer comb. In order to preserve the continuity of the fleece Arkwright invented filleting for card clothing in place of the sheets which up to then had been in use. The fleece was then contracted by passing it through a tube, after

which it was delivered into a can. From this time improvements succeeded one another at greater or less intervals, but the limits of space will not permit of these being traced to the present time. The sum of them, however, is the card as it is known to-day, and of which there are several varieties.

The first of these which calls for notice is the roller card. A section of this card with a portion of the side is shown in the accompanying illustration, Fig. 30. Its chief parts are the main cylinder, a, which at work has a surface speed of about 1,600 feet per minute; the licker-in, B, so called from its taking the cotton from the feed roller, c, and delivering it to the cylinder or swift; the small cylinder, D, is the doffer, whose function it is to take the carded cotton from the swift; E, the coiler; F, the sliver can; G, the lap resting upon G', the lap roller. Arranged over the main cylinder, and covering about half its circumference, are a a number of small rollers, r and s. The former are carding rollers usually called workers, and the latter strippers or clearers. It is from these this card derives its name of the roller card. The licker-in, cylinder, workers, clearers, and doffer have their surfaces covered with card clothing, the fineness of which is varied according to the class of work to be performed.

Here we may briefly summarize the different ends sought to be obtained by the carding process:—

1st. The removal of all impurities, either natural or foreign to the cotton, which may have escaped the preceding processes.

2nd. The extraction of all immature, short, broken or nepped fibres, the retention of which would weaken or otherwise depreciate the quality of the yarn.

3rd. To disentangle the confused mass of fibres and place them side by side, or, in other words, in parallel order. 4th. To attenuate the heavy sheet of cotton forming the lap into a thin film or fleece, and to contract this into a ribbon or sliver fitted for the next process.