Cotton-spinning machinery

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Cotton Spinning Machinery relates to machines which process (or spin) raw cotton into workable yarn or thread. Such machinery can be dated back centuries. During the 18th and 19th century, as part of the Industrial Revolution cotton spinning machinery was developed with the purpose of mass-production in mind. Cotton spinning machinery was installed in large factories, commonly known as Cotton mills.

The Platt Brothers, based in Oldham, England were amongst the most prominent machine makers in this field of work.

Eventually the hand mule became a machine in which most of the work was done automatically; the spinner being chiefly required, to regulate the velocity of the backing off, and the inward run of the carriage, and to actuate the fallers. As a result of these alterations the machine was made almost double the length of Kellys. In this state many mules continued to be used until the last decade of the 19th century.

Between the years 1824 and 1830 Richard Roberts invented mechanism that rendered all parts of the mule self-acting and they regulate the rotation of the spindles during the inward run of the carriage. At first his machine was only used to spin coarse and low-meilium counts, but it is now employed to spin all counts of yarn. Although numerous changes have since been made in the self-acting mule, the machine still bears indelible marks of the genius of Roberts.

For many purposes, the threads as spun by the ring frame or the mule are ready for the manufacturer; but where extra strength or smoothness is required, as in threads for sewing, crocheting, hosiery, lace and carpets; also where multicoloured effects are needed, as in Grandrelle, or some special form of irregularity, as in corkscrewed, and knopped yarns, two or more single threads are compounded and twisted together. This operation is known as doubling. In order to prepare threads for doubling it may be necessary to wind side by side upon a flanged bobbin, or upon a ,straight or a tapering spool, from two to six threads before twisting them into one.

Winding machines for this purpose are of various kinds. There are those in which the threads are laid evenly between the flanges of a bobbin, and those that coil the threads upon a straight or a tapering tube to form cheeses. In the latter the tubes may be laid upon diagonally split drums and rotated by frictional contact. By placing each group of threads to be wound in the slit of a rotating drum, it is drawn quickly to and fro and coiled upon a spool. If solid instead of split drums are used, the guides for all the threads on one side of a machine are attached to a bar, which is traversed by a cam placed at one end of the frame. Or independent mechanism may be provided throughout for treating each group of threads to be wound. The bobbins or tubes may be filled from cops, ring spools or hanks, but a stop motion is required for each thread, which will come into operation immediately a fracture occurs.