INFLUENCE OF CARDING LICKER-IN TYPE ON MELANGE YARN PRODUCTION Prof. B. B. Jambagi* and R.Shiva Prakaash D.K.T.

ES Textile and Engineering Institute, Ichalkaranji-416115 (India) Email-shivaprakaash89@gmail.com Abstract: Due to their specific properties of aesthetics and comfort, melange cotton yarns are used in the production of a variety of fabrics for shirting, home textiles products, underwear apparel and sports. Melange yarns are spun from a number of fibres with different shades. The dyeing of fibres are mainly two types i.e., flock dyed fibres and spun dyed fibres. During dyeing the fibre get damaged in the sense change in fibre properties like strength, length. The higher degree of damage of the dyed fibres mixed with white ones has a negative effect on the quality of the melange yarn. The quality of the melange yarn depends considerably on the blending stage, as well as the spinning systems1. In spinning process the carding has susceptible to more fibre breakage and fibre damage. Our aim to reduce the fibre breakage in carding by using the pintype licker-in system and also study about the advantage and disadvantage of pin type licker-in in cost wise also and quality wise also. Keywords: Melange yarn, polyester/cotton yarns, fibre breakage, pinned licker-in. Introduction: Melange yarns are spun from cotton or polyester fibers with different colors. Mixing dyed and undyed fibers with varying degrees, it is a common method of producing of a variety of fancy yarns. Mixing of fibers with different colors could be done either in the blow room at the start of spinning preparation or by feeding different dyed fibers to the draw frames. Cotton melange yarns are spun from a number of cotton fibers with different colors. Some Studies show that scouring and dyeing process of cotton fibers lead to a greater entanglement and cohesion among them, decreasing of fibers strength and removal of a part of the wax present on the surface of cotton fibers. Further mechanical processes on these fibers lead to fiber damage and decreasing of their length and strength parameters. These variations on fibers not only affect the efficiency of spinning process, also mechanical and physical properties of the final yarn and fabric1.

The main objects of carding are; The process of fibre opening to a state of individual fibres, To remove neps, tiny lumps of fibres and fused fibre ends, To blend fibres and To deliver a continuous sliver for further processing. After dyeing the fibre damage is more in the carding process only because of metallic clothed rollers, speed of the different rollers and setting in the carding. The change in physical properties is length, strength, fibre rupture and fibre damage2. Melange yarn: Melange yarn is the fiber dyed before spinning. The yarn is produced from color printed tops or slivers. The color bands are short enough that each fiber has multiple colors. This results in a heathered effect after spinning. Think of the individual hairs of a tabby cat. Individual hairs are banded so they contain both black and grey on the same hair. When the hair is brushed off the resulting effect is a heathered grey. Fibre dyeing Principle of dyeing Adsorption of the dyestuff at the fibre surface Diffusion of the dyestuff through the internal structure of the fibre Fixation or anchoring of the dye molecule at a suitable location or dye site3.

Type of fibre dyeing methods Loose stock dyeing Spun dyeing

Change in Fibre properties after dyeing The change in fibre characteristics after dyeing is like The fibre denier becomes coarser by 4-5% The fibre tenacity decreases by 5-20% The breaking elongation increases by 16-30% The fibre friction increases4.

Dyeability of polyester fibre Main reason for the poor dyeability of polyester fibres is a low diffusion of the dye molecules into the fibre structure. Any change in fibre structure results in an altered dyeability of the fibre. The effect of fibre structural changes, such as altered ratio of crystalline and amorphous regions in drawing or changed size of pores in the fibre due to swelling, etc. on dyeablility is determined by the so called accessibility of the fibres to dyes. There are three type

of polyester dyeing are carrier dyeing, HTHP dyeing and thermosol dyeing. The dyes used for polyester is disperse dye5. Loose stock or sliver dyeing Dyeing of fibre prior to spinning is loose stock dyeing. Sliver dyeing is dyeing after the sliver preparation to avoid shade variation due trash particles, to avoid entanglement. The main advantages of fibre dyeing are more color ranges. The disadvantages of loose stock dyeing are problems of oligomers, poor fastness properties, shade variation, change in the fibres properties after dying and Environmental & Cost Benefits6.

Effect of oligomers during processing Polyester fibres are currently dyed with disperse dyes at temperature around 125C. All polyester fibres contain, depending on their type, 1.5 to 2 percent of low molecular substances, mostly cyclic oligomers which diffuse to the fibre surface at a High temperature and particularly at high temperature settle together with dye particles, on the dyeing machine walls & on the fibre surface. Oligomers deposited on the fibre surface are responsible for difficulties in subsequent fibre processing. They increase dustiness & make the fibre surface rough. Mill trials showed that addition of lubricants to the reducing clearing liquor results in part of the oligomers being bound & the handle of the dyed polyester staple. Foreign polyester spinners recommend various types of such lubricating agents, eg., the Bethamin 1199, Leomin HS 6 or Sromin SG 100. The percent of oligomers content increases from 1.5% in grey to around 3% on dyeing in dark shades. Oligomers tend to come out on to the surface on abrasion leads to lot of powder formation at the trumpets. The card speeds have also to be dropped because of the oligomers. To reduce this problem some of the mill doing reduction clearing at the rate of1-1.5g/liter and some mills are doing double reduction clearing6.

Dope dyeing of polyester fibres Spun-dyeing is achieved by adding the dyestuff, most often insoluble pigments, to the initial raw material or directly to the polymer melt before spinning. Spun-dyeing of man-made offers several economical and technical advantages; they particularly high output. The main economical advantage over surface dyeing from solution dyeing is a 100% dye yield. Moreover, there is complete saving of dye-house equipment and partial machinery savings in winding rooms and finishing plants. Mechanical wear of the textile material is greatly reduced and savings in transport and labor costs are also significant7. Change in properties after dyeing: cotton A literature review shows that cotton fibres suffer from a rather low decrease in strength after being dyed, especially with reactive and indigo dyes. Dyeing cotton fibres leads to their greater entanglement and cohesion. Moreover, due to the removal of a large portion of the wax present on the surface of cotton fibres during the scouring and dyeing process, the average length of cotton fibres decreases with a higher rate than that of white cotton fibres after going through the blending, carding and drawing process. The fibre damage not only affects the efficiency of the spinning process, but also the mechanical properties of the final yarn and fabric. We mainly focus on fibre breakage during processing. Clegg8 reported that the 5% portion of damaged fibres in a cotton bale increased to 54% in the spun yarn. Rebenfeld9 studied the effect of several processing stages on the mechanical properties of cotton fibre; he established that all the processing stages affect the mechanical properties of cotton fibres, and their extent is process-dependent, as in bleaching, mercerizing and resin finishing, which generally alter the fibre properties more than mechanical actions such as carding, spinning and weaving. Koo10 et al studied the strength, elongation, unevenness and spinnability of component fibres of a specialty yarn as a function of the blending ratio of dyed cotton blended with raw cotton. He concludes that the average tenacity, elongation and fibre length decreases after pretreatment and dyeing. The tenacity of specialty yarns manufactured from dyed and raw cotton

decreased as the percentage of dyed cotton on increased to 40%. The spinnability of these specialty yarn also decreased as the blending ratio increased. Change in properties after dyeing: polyester The concentrations of disperse dyes appear to be one of the major factors for the direction and extent of the structure transformation in the polyester substrate, with expected influence on the physical and mechanical properties of the dyed fibres. The different structure sensitive methods have shown that the lowest concentrations of disperse dyes provoke the further improvement of the crystal phase in the polyester fibres, followed by the opposite effect from the relaxation in the medium concentration interval. Most probably the turn in the structural behavior is caused by the penetration of dye particles in the thicker amorphous areas/inter fibril/ altering into the composition of the fibre forming polymer.the changes in the supra molecular structure in the high concentration area are a manifestation of the complex influence of the further crystallization and the so called by us cross linking effect. Because of change in crystal structure the fibre strength decresed2. Carding: The main objectives of carding are; The process of fibre opening to a state of individual fibres To remove neps, tiny lumps of fibres and fused fibre ends To blend fibres To deliver a continuous sliver for further processing2

Modern pinned licker-in advantages in melange spun yarn Fibre opening is key to good yarn spinning. Good, gentle opening ensures maximum retension of fibre strength by minimizing fibre rupture, reducing the level of neps, effective trash removal and minimal amounts of micro dust and lint. It is obvious that well cleaned and opened fibre is a prerequisite to high quality carding and spinning. In modern blowrooms, four types of beaters are primarily used- disc beaters, peg beaters, pinned beaters and saw tooth beater. Though in modern blowroom lines, it is claimed that less cleaning points are required which helps reduce fibre damage at high productions rates, what is actually done is that multiple cleaning points are actually reduced, use of metallic wire leads to aggressive opening and consequent fibre rupture, which affects ring spun fine yarns quality in particular.

It may be prudent to replace the wire wounds rolls with pinned rolls to reduce fibre damage. Most super high production lines are suited for open end spinning operations where quality demands are more forgiving. Machine makes are thus increasingly adopting the pin technologies to overcome some of the issues posed by aggressive metallic wire cleaning11,12. Mechanism of fibre breakage The fibre gets broken in two steps i.e., is every fiber in a tuft has one and only one opportunity of being caught by a cardwire tooth and having one end freed from the tuft or being broken at the wire and following the first step, every fiber or fiber segment still partially trapped within a tuft will be caught a second time by a card wire tooth and will either be freed or broken.

Since we suspected that the maximum load a fiber could sustain without breaking might depend on the shape of the tooth around which it was looped, we performed simple tensile tests on wool fibers sampled from a group of sound crossbred staples. Two types of card wire were used: metallic wire of saw-tooth profile and rectangular cross section, and pointed pins of circular cross section. Randomly selected fibers were mounted on cardboard using double-sided adhesive tape, with a distance of 50 mm between the points of attachment of the fibers. The cardboard mount was cut into strips so that each strip carried one fiber. A strip was folded and clamped in the lower jaws of an Instron tensile tester. The cardboard strip was cut carefully so that the fiber remained intact. A tooth mounted in the upper jaws of the machine was then engaged in the fiber

loop and drawn upwards at 500 mm/minute, the fiber thus being stretched and eventually breaking13,14 Tooth type Saw tooth wire Round wire No of fibres 90 81 Breaking load , mN 513 622 Confidence level 27 42

Behavior of fibre in saw tooth and pin type licker-in Choice of beater and sequence of opening depends on the nature of fibres and the process requirements. Long staple cotton with low trash would require lesser beating and more opening than short staple, trashy cotton. Synthetic fibres require no beating and only gentle opening. Though not preferred, saw tooth wires can be used for opening polyester or nylon fibre. However, they can cause several problems if used for opening soft fibres like viscose since such fibres have a tendency to disintegrate under stress. Opening action of saw tooth wire is characteristically different from pins. The opening action is done by the knife edges of the saw tooth, which tend to cut open fibres. This causes fibre rupture and lint generation. This tends to increase the percentage of short fibres and the level of neps. The trash contained in the fibre supply also tends to disintegrate into micro dust due to the saw tooth action. In comparison, the pin has a smooth round surface and a spherical tip, which opens the fibres through a gentle untangling action. It is obvious that fibre rupture would be minimized as well as the consequent generation of micro dust and lint would also be reduced considerably with use of pins. The round profile of pins also has another significant advantage- that of higher performing life and more consistent quality of opening15. Advantages of pinned rollers on yarn quality The improvements are even more dramatic-significant reduction in yarn imperfection, fibre rupture, fibre loss and trash content in sliver. In certain cases, more than 50% reduction in imperfections, upto 4% reduction in short fibre content and more than 2% savings in fibre have been achieved in the card after the upgrade. Card production increased 15%.

Successful upgrades have been done on most of the leading makes of high speed cards and all fibre mixes including short or long staple cotton, viscose, polyester or other synthetic fibres and for dyed and grey yarn of counts ranging from 2s to 140s12.

Wear and tear of licker-ins The knife edge gets rounded thus reducing opening action significantly. Moreover, small cuts or crevices develop on the leading edge of the saw tooth, which tends to catch the fibres and create neps. Usually, the edge of the saw tooth loses its sharpness in the first few months itself, thus causing a rapid deterioration in the fibre opening action. This is partially mitigated by grinding the roller so that the teeth regain their sharpness, but this lasts for much less duration before the deterioration occurs again.

Another significant effect of this loss of sharp edges is that the saw tooth begins to push fibres rather than open and carry them forward. This obviously results in an increase in fibre droppage, leading to a loss of rich fiber and lowering of fibre yield. The pin has a rounded tip; it retains its opening ability much longer. Additionally, the wear all around the tip causes a new tip to be formed as the old one is eroded, though the pin length gets slightly reduced. This results in several significant benefits-increases in life of pins,

more consistent opening action, thus ensuring a consistent sliver quality and a higher fibre yield as compared to saw tooth wires15. Conclusion Dyeing of polyester/cotton fibers in their loose state leads to an increased amount of fibre damage, in comparison to undyed fibres. Instead sliver dyeing is more preferred after carding. The quality of the melange cotton yarn deteriorates to a considerable extent, as a result, higher degree of damaged dyed cotton fibres may be mixed with the white ones. So precautions should be taken in carding process to avoid the damage of dyed fibre. The modern technology like pinned licker-in intends to avoid excessive such fibre damages. Otherwise spun dyed materials are preferred rather than synthetic fibres. Because there is no change in fibre properties in the spun dyed polyester fibres. Reference 1. S.Karabalaie Karim, A.A.Gharehaghaji and H.Tavanaie, A Study of the damage caused to dyed Cotton fibres and its Effects on the properties of Rotor and Ring spun Melange yarns, Fibres and textiles in Eastern Europe, July/September 2007, Vol 15, No. 3, P63. 2. Carl A. Lawrence, Fundamentals of spun yarn technology, CRC Press, 2003. 3. C.V.Koushik and Antao Irwin Josico, Chemical Processing of Textiles, NCUTE, 2003. 4. K.R.Salhotra, Spinning of Man-mades and Blends on Cotton system, The Textile Association, 1993. 5. Milena Nedkova, Pavel Pavlov and Dimiter Pishev, Influence of disperse dyes on some structural and physical mechanical properties of polyester Fibre, SASMIRA, Nov 2003, P3. 6. Oldrich Pajgrt and Bohumil Reichstadter, Textile Science and Technology; Part II: Processing of Polyester Fibres, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, 1979. 7. Jitendra K.Srivastava, K.V.Narrasimham and A.A.Vaidya, Mass-coloration of polyester, Textile Asia, August 1987, P 142-146. 8. Clegg G.G.J., Journal of the Textile Institute, 1940, Vol.31, T49-68. 9. Rebenfield L., The effect of processing on cotton fibre Properties, Textile Research Journal, 1957, P473-479. 10. Koo J.G., Park J.W. and An S.K., Properties of speciality yarn based on raw and dyed cotton, Textile Research Journal, 2003, vol.73, P26-30.

11. B.S.Dasaradan and R.Rajagopalan, Effective Carding with Pin-type Licker-in, ITJ, Sep 1990, P 228-231. 12. Basant Wire Industries Brochure. 13. Errol J. Wood, Paul Stanley-Boden and Garth A. Carnaby, Fiber Breakage during Carding: Part II: Evaluation, TRJ, Vol-54, 1984, P 419-424. 14. K. R. Salhotra and R. Chattopadhyay, Incidence and Mechanism of Fiber Breakage in Rotor Spinning, TRJ, Vol-52, May 1982, P 317-320. 15. Brain A Leach and Kishore Kumar Khaitan, Selection of Beater design in fibre preparation, ITJ, Dec 2008, P 108-112.