ABSTRACT
Modern rotary-knife roller-gin stands and feeders include improvements in feeding ability and ginning rate. A ginning rate in excess of one bale per hour per 40-inch-wide gin stand can be easily achieved while processing good quality Pima cotton. Research indicates that roller-ginning rates theoretically can be increased up to 4 bales per hour per stand (1). To achieve these higher ginning rates, the roller-gin stands must be monitored and managed by an automatic computer control. Gillum (1) introduced the concept of computer control of roller gins on a 16-inch-wide laboratory rotary-knife roller gin. The control technology has since been applied to a full-size rotaryknife gin stand at the Mesilla Park Ginning Lab. By increasing gin-roll speed and automatically controlling seed-cotton feed rate by monitoring rotary-knife power, ginning rates of up to 2 bales per hour on rough cotton were achieved on a 40-inch-wide gin stand (2). Another automatic control has been installed on one stand in a commercial gin plant for the 1989-90 ginning season. The unit has operated for over 600 hours without any problems. The automatic control has eliminated most gin-stand problems, such as chokeups, which occasionally occur on manually controlled gin stands. The roll speed of the automatic-control gin stand has not yet been increased, but the gin superintendent intends to increase the roll speed of the test stand to take advantage of the increased ginning capacity possible with the automatic computer control.
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