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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The quality of spun yarn is characterised in terms of its evenness,

hairiness, tensile strength, elongation at a break and faults. The evenness of the
yarn depends on the quality of preparatory material and irregularities introduced
at the ring frame. The irregularities may be introduced due to drafting wave,
roller slip, roller nip movement and roller speed variations during drafting at the
ring frame. The drafting wave is formed as a result of non-steady motion of the
fibres in the drafting field. When all the fibres are not in same length, the shorter
ones are released by the back rollers before their front ends have reached the
front rollers. These fibres tend to come out of the front rollers in clots and so
cause alternate thick and thin places in the drafted material. This is called the
drafting wave.

In spinning process, function of roller drafting is essentially to realise

the relative shifting of fibres and redistribute them into longer displacement, thus
reducing the mass per unit length as required and also making the fibres as
straight and parallel. But roller drafting also causes yarn irregularity due to
uncontrolled movement of fibres in the drafting zone. Hence the motion of
floating fibres has been the subject of theoretical study with the aim to control
them effectively to improve yarn regularity. Apron roller drafting is used to
control the fibre movement in main drafting zone. In addition to that the pin
spacers are used to control the movement of floating fibre in the main drafting
zone.

The prevention of floating fibres from accelerating to the speed of

front roller before they reach the front roller nip is essential to avoid the
formation of drafting wave and it can be achieved by i)exerting controlling
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force over the floating fibres using aprons and ii) increasing the inertial force of
drafting fibres. For better control of floating fibres during drafting, higher
controlling force is required towards the front roller nip, where the floating
fibres tend to accelerate to the speed of the front roller before they reach the
front roller nip. However, in the existing double apron drafting system,
controlling force is exerted towards the middle roller away from the front roller
nip due to design constraints (Subramanian and Peer Mohamed 2006).

The favourable distribution of controlling force required at the main

draft zone will be providing higher controlling force towards the front roller nip
without increasing drafting resistance. The pin spacer used in the industry meets
above requirement to a certain level (Suessen 2013). To further increase the
friction between the pin and the drafting fibres, in order to increase the control
over the movement of floating fibres at the zone nearer to front roller nip, it is
experimented to change the design of the pin spacer.

1.1 OBJECTIVES
The objectives of the present work are to
Modify the design of the existing pin spacer to increase the control over
the floating fibres towards the delivery roller.
Study the effect of modified pin spacer on quality of yarn.