Weaving Technology

A fabric can be defined as an manufactured assembly of fibres or yarns which has substantial area relation to its thickness and sufficient mechanical strength to give assembly in-heart cohesion.

Fabric can be manufactured by any one of the following methods:1. Weaving technology
2. Knitting technology
3. Braiding technology
4. Nonwoven technology

The process of producing fabrics by interlacement of warp and weft is known as weaving. Yarns are placed in length wise direction while weft yarns are placed in width wise direction in fabric.

During weaving process the warp yarns are wound on a weavers beam in sheet form. Weft yarn may be wound on pirns and ring frame bobbins (in modern machines direct cross wound packages are supplied). If the weft is supplied in form of pirns it is termed as “rewound weft” and if supplied in form of ring frame bobbin than it is termed as “direct weft”. For better quality of fabric rewound weft is preferred.

Individual warp yarns are also known as “ends” and individual warp yarns are known as “picks” it’s also known as “filling yarns”.
Warp and weft are interlaced on a machine known as “loom”. So, loom is a machine to produce fabric from yarn. The loom may be power driven or hand driven. Power driven looms are known as “power looms” were as hand driven looms are known as “hand looms”.

Power looms can be further classified as follows:1. Non-automatic looms
2. Automatic looms
3. Shuttle less looms

A power loom without any attachment produce fancy fabric is known as plain power looms.

•  Time line of power looms:

Edmund Cartwright built and patented a power loom in 1785, and it was this that was adopted by the nascent cotton industry in England. A silk loom was made by Jacques Vaucanson in 1745, which used the same ideas but it wasn’t developed further. The invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay had been critical to the development of a commercially successful power loom. Cartwright’s loom was impractical but the ideas were developed by numerous inventors in the Manchester area in England, where by 1818 there were 32 factories containing 5732 looms.

Horrocks loom was viable but it was the Roberts Loom in 1830 that marked the turning point. Before this time hand looms had outnumbered power looms. Incremental changes to the three motions continued to be made. The problems of sizing, stop-motions, consistent take-up and a temple to maintain the width remained. In 1841, Kenworthy and Bullough produced the Lancashire Loom which was self-acting or semi-automatic. This enables a 15-year-old spinner to run six looms at the same time. Incrementally, the Dickinson Loom, and then the Keighley born inventor Northrop working for Draper in Lowell produced the fully automatic Northrop Loom which recharged the shuttle when the pirn was empty. The Draper E and X model became the leading products from 1909 until they were challenged by the different characteristics of synthetic fibers such as rayon.

From 1942 the faster and more efficient shuttleless Sulzer Looms and the rapier looms were introduced. Modern industrial looms can weave at 2000 weft insertions per minute. Today, advances in technology have produced a variety of looms designed to maximize production for specific types of material. The most common of these are air-jet looms and water-jet looms.