Carding

[1] This is achieved by passing the fibres between differentially moving surfaces covered with "card clothing", a firm flexible material embedded with metal pins.

Commercial cards also have rollers and systems designed to remove some vegetable matter contaminants from the wool.

Card clothing is made from a sturdy flexible backing in which closely spaced wire pins are embedded.

Science historian Joseph Needham ascribes the invention of bow-instruments used in textile technology to India.

[4] These carding devices, called kaman (bow) and dhunaki, would loosen the texture of the fibre by the means of a vibrating string.

[5] In 1748 Lewis Paul of Birmingham, England, invented two hand driven carding machines.

[5] Daniel Bourn obtained a similar patent in the same year, and probably used it in his spinning mill at Leominster, but this burnt down in 1754.

Arkwright's second patent (of 1775) for his carding machine was subsequently declared invalid (1785) because it lacked originality.

Modern machines are driven by belting from an electric motor or an overhead shaft via two pulleys.

[8] Carding: the fibres are separated and then assembled into a loose strand (sliver or tow) at the conclusion of this stage.

The cotton leaves the carding machine in the form of a sliver; a large rope of fibres.

Repeated drawing increases the quality of the sliver allowing for finer counts to be spun.

The rovings are collected in a drum and proceed to the slubbing frame which adds twist, and winds onto bobbins.

Intermediate Frames are used to repeat the slubbing process to produce a finer yarn, and then the roving frames reduces it to a finer thread, gives more twist, makes more regular and even in thickness, and winds onto a smaller tube.

A carder that takes up a full room works very similarly, the main difference being that the fibre goes through many more drums often with intervening cross laying to even out the load on the subsequent cards, which normally get finer as the fibre progresses through the system.

Some hand-spinners have a small drum carder at home especially for the purpose of mixing together the different coloured fibre that are bought already carded.

The working face of each paddle can be flat or cylindrically curved and wears the card cloth.

The large drum carders do not tend to get along well with lanolin, so most commercial worsted and woollen mills wash the wool before carding.

The licker-in, or smaller roller meters fibre from the infeed tray onto the larger storage drum.

The two rollers are connected to each other by a belt- or chain-drive so that their relative speeds cause the storage drum to gently pull fibres from the licker-in.

This pulling straightens the fibres and lays them between the wire pins of the storage drum's card cloth.

Raw fibre, placed on the in-feed table or conveyor is moved to the nippers which restrain and meter the fiber onto the swift.