Carding

The process of disentanglement, cleaning and intimate mixing of fibres to produce a continuous web or sliver suitable for further processing.

The carding machines consist of a feed hopper with a weighing or metering device to ensure a regular and consistent fibre feed into the machines. The carding machines have two main sections, scribbler and carder, each consist of a series of large rollers called swifts and each of these contain pairs of small rollers around their upper circumference called workers and strippers. Every roller is covered with fine card wire and by varying the speeds of the rollers we can control and align the fibres as they pass through the machine.

The two sections are separated by an intermediate feed, which removes a rope of fibres from the scribbler and lays them at a 90 degree angle across the carder. The opening and alignment becomes more precise as the wires becomes finer towards the end of the carder section.

At the end of the machine an even web of fibre is removed and passed through the final part of the machine called the condenser. Here a series of flexible narrow tapes separates the fibre web into narrow strips and carries these strips into the rubbing section which converts these parallel strips into rounded form called slubbings which are then wound side by side onto condenser bobbins in preparation for spinning.