CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



Fig. it. 



adhering matter. This, however, has brought 

 about a condition of matters not desiderated in the 

 after processes namely, a complete confusion of 

 the fibres, causing them to lie in all directions 

 one to another. It is the duty of the following 

 machines to bring all the fibres parallel to one 

 another. The more complete the parallelisation, 

 the higher the quality of the yarn obtained. 



If the reader will take a quantity of loose fibres 

 of cotton, confused and twisted together, and 

 place them between two brushes, and move the 

 brushes parallel to one another, but in opposite 

 directions, repeating the process several times, he 

 will find the fibres lie parallel to one another. 

 This is exactly the carding process. The teeth of 

 the brushes or cards are, however, fixed upon 

 revolving surfaces, and are 

 not straight, but bent, as a, 

 fig. ii. The revolving teeth 

 act against the teeth of other 

 cards fixed on a curved sur- 

 face, and the inclination of 

 which is in an opposite direction. There are two 

 arrangements of carding-engines in use. In the 

 first, a large cylinder, bb t fig. n, rotates rapidly, 

 provided on its surface with a series of strips of 

 leather, in which the wire card-teeth are fixed. 

 These rotate in close contact with a series of 

 cards called flats, c, c, fixed in the inner side of 

 the outer casing, which is of the same curve as the 

 large cylinder. In the second arrangement, the 

 large cylinder is retained ; but it works in contact 

 with a series of small cylinders, provided with 

 card-teeth, which rotate less rapidly than the large 

 cylinder : these are termed squirrels or urchins, 

 or strippers and clearers. The flat and urchin 

 systems are sometimes combined in one. The 

 operation of the carding-machine on the combined 

 system is as follows: The lap-roller, b, fig. 12, with 

 its length of cotton-lap 

 wound roundit, is placed 

 at the end of the ma- 

 chine, in bearings the 

 _^_^ lap is withdrawn from 



h this by two feed-rollers, 



c; it is then taken up by 

 Fig. 12. a small cylinder, d, fur- 



nished with card-teeth, 



and called the 'licker-in ;' from this it is taken up 

 by the large carding-cylinder, a, and delivered to 

 the small strippers, f,f, which, rotating with less 

 speed, hold the fibres to allow the large cards to 

 act upon them ; the flats, as c, c, fig. n, also take 

 the fibres up, the process being a continual deliver- 

 ing and redelivering from the large cylinder to the 

 small ones and the flats. The cotton is ulti- 

 mately taken from the large cylinder by another, 

 termed the doffing-cylinder, g; on which the cards 

 are fixed in spiral lines. To take the cotton from 

 this is the work of the doffing-knife, which is a 

 long flat blade, with one edge serrated, fixed at 

 the ends to two connecting-rods, h, which have 

 a quick up-and-down motion given to them by 

 cranks at their lower extremities. The action of 

 the knife is to strip off the cotton from the dof- 

 fing-cylinder in a sheet of extreme lightness. 

 This is gathered up, passed through a trumpet- 

 mouth, o, and- finally between revolving rollers, m, 

 so as to form the cotton into a long, flat, and 

 narrow ribbon, which, by means of ingenious 

 mechanism, is coiled into long, narrow cans, in 



374 



Fig. 13- 



such a way as to occupy the least possible space. 

 Two kinds of carding-engines are used in the 

 manufacture the breaker and the finisher. In 

 the former, the cotton, after being carded, is 

 delivered to rollers, and finally wound in a con- 

 tinuous sheet on a lap-roller. This 'lap' is carried 

 to the ' finisher ' carding-cngine, through which it 

 is passed, and finally coiled in the can, as above 

 described. 



The next process is that of ' drawing,' the object 

 of which is still further to parallelise the fibres. 

 Let a tuft of cotton fibres be taken, and separated 

 by means of the fingers ; by repeating this process 

 for some time, it will be found that the confused 

 fibres will lie parallel to one another. Suppose 

 three pair of rollers to revolve near one another, 

 and a thin ribbon to be passed between them if 

 they all revolve at the same speed, the ribbon will 

 go through unaltered ; should, however, the last 

 or third pair revolve faster than the first and 

 middle pair, the ribbon will be pulled out or elon- 

 gated somewhere between the first and third. 

 This is the arrangement of the drawing-frame. 

 In practice, the rollers revolve all at different 

 speeds the third faster than the second. This is 

 the arrangement of the rollers in the finisher 

 carding-engine. The drawing-frame, in which the 

 process is more specially carried out, consists of a 

 series of rollers, aa, bb, cc, fig. 13, the upper of 

 which are covered with leather, 

 and the lower fluted. A flat board, 

 d, faced with flannel, presses on 

 the upper rollers, by which they 

 are cleared of all loose fibres. A 

 number of slivers from cans, gen- 

 erally eight, are united into one, and passing over 

 a grooved brass plate, are taken up by the rollers, 

 and finally delivered to a can from between the 

 rollers, e. The process not only parallelises the 

 fibres, but tends to equalise the quality of the 

 cotton, making the slivers of uniform strength and 

 texture, by combining many slivers into one. 

 This, which is called ' doubling,' is repeated until 

 all defects are got rid of, and a uniform sliver 

 obtained. Thus, in the first instance, eight slivers 

 are passed through one set of rollers, increasing 

 the chance of uniformity eight times if four of 

 these are again made into one, the chances are 

 increased thirty-two times, and so on, till the last 

 sliver may contain parts of 300 slivers. The pro- 

 cess, however, for fine spinning is carried to a 

 much higher rate of multiplication than this, 

 sometimes exceeding 60,000 times. The distance 

 between the rollers is regulated by the length of 

 the staple. As all the cans sent from the draw- 

 ing-frame must have the same length of sliver in 

 each, should any of the slivers break, it is of im- 

 portance that the machine should be stopped at 

 once. This is effected by the machine itself, by 

 the ' patent-stop motion.' The sliver passes to the 

 rollers over a nicely balanced lever, which is kept 

 in position by the friction of the passing sliver ; 

 when it breaks, the lever falls out of position, 

 releases a lever which acts upon another lever, 

 and passes the driving-belt from the fast to the 

 loose pulley, and stops the machine. The draw- 

 ing-frame is of considerable length, containing 

 several sets of drawing-rollers. 



The machine next used is called the roving, or 

 slubbing, or bobbin and fly frame ; the duty of 

 which is to give the loose, porous, thick cord from 



