HOW COTTON FIBER PROPERTIES AFFECT ROTOR SPINNING PERFORMANCE AND POTENTIAL

Chris Faerber

ABSTRACT

Today, fine count rotor yarns, produced from carded cotton in Western mills, are competing against combed ring-spun yarns manufactured in the Far East and offered to the world's markets at amazingly low prices. Global competition challenges the rotor yarn producer to reduce manufacturing costs to a competitive level, while maintaining the required quality standards.

In fine count rotor spinning, raw material costs may well account for more than 50% of the total manufacturing costs (Fig. 1). Any measures taken in the field of raw materials will therefore have a considerable impact on the mill's internal cost structure. Optimization of raw material selection or lay-down composition in terms of quality and cost, represents an effective instrument for the creation of a competitive product and thus may be considered the nucleus of a business survival strategy. From this perspective, cotton as a raw material must be assigned the same degree of importance as, e.g., the location of the industry and the equipment to be purchased.

The influence of cotton fiber properties such as strength, length, and fineness on rotor yarn quality has been thoroughly researched [8].* Little is known about the fiber properties that affect yarn breakage frequency and, consequently, the spin limit. Yet, knowledge of these relationships becomes essential when optimum manufacturing conditions in the respective count ranges are to be achieved by improvements at the early stage of raw material purchasing or composition of cost-effective lay-downs. The question is: What are the cotton characteristics required for the spinning of rotor yarns of desired fineness and quality at optimum machine efficiencies?





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Document last modified July 8, 2004