Investigating Carded Yarn Quality through Cross-Doubling in the Draw frame: A Comprehensive Analysis

A carding machine's performance has an impact on the quality of the carded sliver, which in turn affects the quality of the carded yarn produced. Several factors can influence a machine's efficiency, resulting in fluctuations in the slivers generated over time. To achieve consistent and reproducible quality levels, slivers from all carding machines must be blended homogeneously. This blending process is vital for achieving homogeneity in the final product and maintaining a high quality standard. This can be achieved by cross-doubling. In this technique, carded slivers are arranged into categories of good, medium and low quality based on the nep removal efficiency of the carding machine behind the breaker draw frame. This is a specific type of doubling process. The focus of this research was the effectiveness of the aforementioned practice. Three carding machines were selected out of seven based on the quality level of the produced carded sliver, which was measured by nep removal efficiency. Yarn samples of 29.5 tex were produced from the slivers of the individual carding machines and by cross-doubling them at the breaker draw frame. Samples were collected at each stage of processing and tested. The results showed that cross-doubling significantly reduced variation in the imperfection level and yarn strength, but had very little effect on the mass variation level of the strands. Furthermore, the categorization of the four samples for selection was carried out using the Analytic Hierarchy Process method. This study will provide a guideline for new spinners to enhance yarn quality through cross-doubling on a draw frame machine.