Yarn is the foundational element of fabrics. Yarn manufacturing is a critical stage in textile production, where raw fibers are converted into yarns suitable for weaving or knitting. There are three primary yarn types—Carded, Combed, and Blended Yarns. Each type of yarn follows distinct processing routes to achieve different quality and performance characteristics.
Process Flowchart of Carded Yarn Manufacturing
Carded yarn is known for its economical production and versatility. In the case of carded yarn, comber and its preparatory processes are not included. The material will pass through blow room, carding, drawing (breaker), drawing (finisher), speed frame, ring spinning and cone winding.
Two drawing passages are provided in the modern machines for more uniformity and parallelization of fibers. Carded yarn contains short fibers present in bale population. The flow chart of the carded yarn production process is shown in Figure 1.
Opening and cleaning:
Opening and cleaning is performed by the machines in blow room. Blow room consists of a series of machines arranged in specific sequence to carry out opening, cleaning (for cotton), and mixing/blending of fibers. The cleaning is due to repeated tumbling and breaking of large tufts into smaller ones liberating dust and trash particles which are removed by gravity action or suction.
Carding:
In carding process, fiber tufts are further opened and separated to almost single fiber stage by the card and thereafter reassembled the separated fibers in to a nice randomly placed overlapping array of fibers called sliver.
Drawing:
The card slivers are doubled together and drawn by draw frame. As a result of drawing, the fibers are parallelized, straightened out, and disentangled in case any entanglement is left out. It also improves mass/unit length variation of feed sliver by combing several slivers together.
Roving making:
Roving is stretched out sliver. Roving frame stretches the drawn sliver further, improving fiber alignment. The aligned fibers are consolidated by little twist and packed on a suitable package for ring frame.
Ring spinning:
The yarn is spun on ring frame. Ring frame spins the yarn by stretching the roving further and inserting twist into it for generation of strength. The twisted yarn is wound on a small package called cop.
Winding:
Winding is performed to transform small ring frame package “cop” into a bigger package suitable for production of warper’s beam for weaving. During winding process, many yarn faults (thick place, slubs, thin place, etc.) are also removed.
Process Flowchart of Combed Yarn Manufacturing
Combed yarn involves an additional refining step to remove short fibers and impurities, resulting in smoother, stronger, and premium quality yarns used in luxury apparel. In the case of combed yarn, the material will pass through blow room, carding, pre comber (sliver lap machine, ribbon lap machine, uni lap machine), comber, draw frame (2 passages), speed frame, ring frame and cone winding.
Combed yarns are made from cotton after removing short fibers from the population. The additional processes in combed yarn production are comber lap formation by lap former and comber. Due to limitation of short fibers (fibers < 12.5 mm), the yarn becomes free from many faults, evener, stronger, and less hairy.
Lap former:
Comber machines need fibers to be fed in a straight and well parallelized configuration. A set of slivers (16-18) are transformed into a package called “lap” on lap forming machine. The lap former winds the set of slivers placed parallel on a cylindrical package.
Comber:
Comber is fractionating machine which separates out short fibers from longer ones from the population of fibers present in a lap. After separation, it produces a sliver again consisting of primarily longer length fibers (Figure 2).
Process Flowchart of Blended Yarns Manufacturing
Blended yarn combines two or more fiber types (e.g., cotton-polyester, wool-acrylic) to leverage the strengths of each material, enhancing properties like durability, moisture-wicking, or cost-efficiency. In the case of blended yarns, the process sequence gets altered based on the fiber mixing stage. The two different fibers may be blended in blow room or in drawing and accordingly the sequence changes. Let us take an example of polyester cotton blended yarn. Polyester need not be opened to the extent to which cotton fibers are opened, and impurities are also very less in polyester. There is no need of comber process for polyester fibers. In this case, blending or mixing of fibers is done at blow room or at drawing. The passage of material when blending is done in blow room is as follows. Cotton material is passed through blow room, carding, pre comber, comber and then blended with polyester. This blended material is then passed through blow room with wider settings, carding, draw frame (2 passages), speed frame, ring frame and then cone winding. Polyester fibres go through blow room only once whereas cotton passes through blow room twice. The other passage of material when blending is done in drawing is as follows. Cotton material is passed through blow room, carding, pre comber, comber and then blended with polyester which has passed through blow room and carding. These 2 materials are blended in draw frame. The materials are passed through breaker and finisher drawing, then through, speed frame, ring frame and then cone winding process.
Conclusion:
Manufacturing of Carded, Combed, and Blended Yarn follows distinct process flowchart, each designed to meet specific quality and performance needs. Each yarn type serves a different purpose based on quality, cost, and application. Carded yarn is affordable but rougher, combed yarn is premium and smoother, and blended yarn combines properties for better performance. By understanding the step-by-step process of each type, manufacturers can optimize production, maintain quality control, and cater to diverse market demands.
References:
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