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| Long
fibre spinning
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The
flax is delivered to the spinning mill as long fibres.
Depending on whether the spinning mill has suitable
hackling machines or not the materials come direct
from scutching as line flax or are delivered as slivers
of hackled linen. The following steps are required
to produce yarn that can be used in weaving, knitting
or hosiery: hackling, drafting and preparation, spinning.
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Hackling
flax
The aim of hackling is to clean, untangle and align
parallel the bundles of scutched flax, to separate
the fibrous bundles and to start dividing them, in
order to from a continuous sliver that is ready to
undergo the doubling and drafting operations that
come next.
Scutched flax is hackled on so-called hackling frames.
Handfuls of strands of line flax, weighing 80 to 120
grammes and held in mobile clamps, are feed manually
in the hackling frames. Moving up and down these clamps
convey the fibrous bundles to a double set of combs.
Hackling is carried out vertically and horizontally.
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Collecting
tow
During hackling, a certain quantity of short
fibres is removed from the strands of line
flax. This hackled tow is salvaged by doffers
and collected in containers below the machines.
Graded into two categories as foot or top
tow, it will be used in spinning.
Forming
the sliver
After hackling, the strands of refined line
flax are placed on a slanting table, made
up of a series of moving transversal gills.
As they overlap the strands form a sliver.
After being feed into two calendar rollers
then coiled, these slivers are then pressed
in order to make up packages that will be
tied up and stocked.
Drafting
and preparation
The flax slivers are then subjected to several
doubling and drafting operations. The aims
of these steps are to harmonise the weight
of the slivers, to align them parallel,
to attenuate the fibres and to obtain roves.
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Spinning
Spinning
is the final operation in the whole spinning process,
transforming the rove into yarn. There are several
methods for spinning the hackled flax:
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Wet spinning, which can be done with grey, boiled
and bleached roves
• Semi-wet spinning
• Dry spinning
These
technologies apply the same principle of drafting,
attenuating and twisting the fibres in order to obtain
yarn cohesion. The properties of yarn and hence the
choice of process depend on the type and features
of the desired yarn. Wet spinning remains a special
feature of flax fibre spinning. It enables yarns of
an outstanding quality and finesse to be produced. |
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