17) TEXTILE ENGINEERING

Textile engineering (TE) or textile technology deals with the application of scientific and engineering principles to the design and control of all aspects of fiber, textile, and apparel processes, products, and machinery. These include natural and man-made materials, interaction of materials with machines, safety and health, energy conservation, and waste and pollution control. Additionally, textile engineers are given training and experience in plant design and layout, machine and wet process design and improvement, and designing and creating textile products.


Courses
The courses taken in a typical TE degree program include Textile Engineering Systems, Textile Engineering Design, Mechanics of Fibrous Structures, Textile Engineering Quality Improvement, Textile Information Systems Design, Polymer Engineering, Polymeric Biomaterials Engineering, Mechanics of Tissues & Implants Requirements, Fabric Building Mechanisms, Special Topics in Textile Engineering, Dynamics of Fabric Production Systems, Textile Composites, Polymeric Biomaterials Engineering, Industrial Textiles, Textile Applications in Medicine, Engineering Economics, Basic Electronics of Textile Manufacturing and Quality Testing Machinery, Dyeing, Printing and other methods of textile coloration, and Industrial Planning and Organization (Moi University, 1991).

Throughout the Textile Engineering curriculum, students take classes from other engineering and disciplines including: Mechanical, Chemical, Materials and Industrial Engineering Disciplines. The TE curriculum provides a broad base of fundamental engineering courses as a foundation for studies in textile engineering. Students also learn such fundamental courses as Thermodynamics, Materials Science, Industrial Management, Applied Mechanics, and Engineering Drawing and Design.


Job profile
A textile engineer therefore works with textile materials: fibers, yarns, fabrics, and finishes. Most textile engineers work on product research and development, either improving current textile based products or creating new products. They may also be involved with finding uses for new fibers, yarns, fabrics, or textile finishes.


1- TEXTILE INDUSTRY
An industry (from Latin industrius, "diligent, industrious") is the manufacturing of a good or service within a category. Although industry is a broad term for any kind of economic production, in economics and urban planning industry is a synonym for the secondary sector, which is a type of economic activity involved in the manufacturing of raw materials into goods and products.

There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction, and manufacturing; the tertiary sector, which deals with services (such as law and medicine) and distribution of manufactured goods; and the quaternary sector, a relatively new type of knowledge industry focusing on technological research, design and development such as computer programming, and biochemistry. A fifth quinary sector has been proposed encompassing nonprofit activities. The economy is also broadly separated into public sector and private sector, with industry generally categorized as private. Industries are also any business or manufacturing.

Industry in the sense of manufacturing became a key sector of production and labour in European and North American countries during the Industrial Revolution, which upset previous mercantile and feudal economies through many successive rapid advances in technology, such as the steel and coal production. It is aided by technological advances, and has continued to develop into new types and sectors to this day. Industrial countries then assumed a capitalist economic policy. Railroads and steam-powered ships began speedily establishing links with previously unreachable world markets, enabling private companies to develop to then-unheard of size and wealth. Following the Industrial Revolution, perhaps a third of the world's economic output is derived from manufacturing industries—more than agriculture's share.

Many developed countries (for example the UK, the U.S., and Canada) and many developing/semi-developed countries (People's Republic of China, India etc.) depend significantly on industry. Industries, the countries they reside in, and the economies of those countries are interlinked in a complex web of interdependence.

1-1 MIXING COTTON
Cotton is a hygroscopic material , hence it easily adopts to the atmospheric airconditions. Air temperature inside the mxing and blowroom area should be more than 25 degree centigrade and the relative humidity(RH%) should be around 45 to 60 %, because high moisture in the fibre leads to poor cleaning and dryness in the fibre leads to fibre damages which ultimately reduces the spinnability of cotton.

Cotton is a natural fibre. The following properties vary very much between bales (between fibres) fibre micronaire fibre length fibre strength fibre color fibre maturity Out of these , fibre micronaire, color, maturity and the origin of growth results in dye absorption variation.
There fore it is a good practice to check the maturity , color and micronaire of all the bales and to
maintain the following to avoid dye pick up variation and barre in the finished fabric.



1.2- BLOWROOM PROCESS

Basic operations in the blowroom:
opening
cleaning
mixing or blending
microdust removal
uniform feed to the carding machine
Recycling the waste

Blow room installations consists of a sequence of different machines to carry out the above said
operations.Moreover Since the tuft size of cotton becomes smaller and smaller, the required intensities of processing necessitates different machine configuration.


1.3- CARDING PROCESS
Card is the heart of the spinning mill" and "Well carded is half spun" are two proverbs of the experts.
These proverbs inform the immense significance of carding in the spinning process.High production in carding to economise the process leads to reduction in yarn quality.Higher the production, the more sensitive becomes the carding operation and the greater danger of a negative influence on quality.The technological changes that has taken place in the process of carding is remarkable. Latest machines achieve the production rate of 60 - 100 kgs / hr, which used to be 5 - 10 kgs / hr, upto 1970.


THE PURPOSE OF CARDING:
to open the flocks into individual fibres
cleaning or elimination of impurities
reduction of neps
elimination of dust
elimination of short fibres
fibre blending
fibre orientation or alignment
sliver formation



1.4- METALLIC CARD CLOTHING
As Carding machine design improved in 1950's and 60's, it became apparent that card clothing was a limiting factor


Much time and effort was spent in the development of metallic card clothing.
There are two rules of carding


The fibre must enter the carding machine, be efficiently carded and taken from it in as little time as possible
The fibre must be under control from entry to exit
Control of fibres in a carding machine is the responsibilitgy of the card clothing
Following are the five types of clothings used in a Carding machine


Cylinder wire
Doffer wire
Flat tops
Licker-in wire
Stationary flats

CYLINDER WIRE: The main parameters of CYLINDER Card clothing
Tooth depth
Carding angle
Rib width
Wire height
Tooth pitch
Tooth point dimensions

1.5- RING FRAME
The ring spinning will continue to be the most widely used form of spinning machine in the near future,
because it exhibits significant advantages in comparison with the new spinning processes.



Following are the advantages of ring spinning frame

It is universaly applicable, i.e.any material can be spun to any required count
It delivers a material with optimum charactersticss, especially with regard to structure and strength.
it is simple and easy to master
the know-how is well established and accessible for everyone

1.6- WINDING
Ring spinning produces yarn in a package form called cops.

Since cops from ringframes are not suitable for further processing, the winding process serves to achieve additional objectives made necessary by the requirements of the subsequent processing stages.

Following are the tasks of winding process

Extraction of all disturbing yarn faults such as the short, long thick ,long thin, spinners doubles, etc
Manufacture of cones having good drawing - off properties and with as long a length of yarn as possible
paraffin waxing of the yarn during the winding process
introduction into the yarn of a minimum number of knots
achievement of a high machine efficiency i.e high produciton level
The winding process therefore has the basic function of obtaining a larger package from several small ring bobbins. This conversion process provides one with the possibility of cutting out unwanted and problematic objectionable faults. The process of removing such objectionable faults is called as yarn ‘ clearing’ .

1.7- YARN CONDITIONING
Why conditioning is required?

Moisture in atmosphere has a great impact on the physical properties of textile fibres and yarns.

Relative humidity and temperature will decide the amount of moisure in the atmosphere. High relative humidity in different departments of spinning is not desirable. It will result in major problems. But on the otherhand, a high degree of moisture improves the physical properties of yarn. Moreover it helps the yarn to attain the standard moisture regain value of the fibre. Yarns sold with lower moisture content than the standard value will result in monetary loss. Therefore the aim of CONDITIONING is to provide an economical device for supplying the necessary moisture in a short time, in order to achieve a lasting improvement in quality.

BOOKS ON TEXTILE ENGINEERING