this he failed, as did Eaton, Smith and many others, although each contributed something towards the solution of the problems involved in automatic spinning. 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 Kelly’s. In this state many mules continued to be used until the last decade of the 19th century, and a few are still in use. Between the years 1824 and 1830 Richard Roberts invented mechanism that rendered all parts of the mule self-acting, the chief parts of which are shown at (I, J), 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-medium 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.
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| Fig. 9. |
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 be 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.
Doublers.—In action doublers are continuous and intermittent. The former resemble throstle and ring spinning machines, but since they do not attenuate the material, only one line of rollers is provided. The folded material is placed in a creel and led through the rollers to the spindles to be twisted in a wet or dry condition. If wet, the moisture flattens down most of the protruding ends of the fibres and produces a comparatively smooth thread; if dry, the doubled yarn retains some of its furry character. There are two types of continuous doublers, which are known respectively as English and Scotch. By the English system of dry doubling the yarn from the creel may be treated, on its way to the spindle, in various ways to obtain the desired tension. It may be led under a rod, over a guide, round and between the rollers, and round a glass peg. For wet doubling, a trough containing water is placed behind the rollers, and the yarn passes beneath a glass rod in the water, thence over a guide, beneath, between and over the rollers to the spindles. By the Scotch system the trough is placed below the rollers, and the bottom roller is partly immersed in water. It is claimed that this system wets the fibres more thoroughly than the English one. For the purpose of twisting the strands together the spindles may be provided either with flyers, as in throstle spinning, or with rings and travellers, as in ring spinning. The twist is generally in the opposite direction to that in the single threads. When more than three strands are required in a compound thread it is customary to pass the material more than once through the doubler, as, for example, in a sixfold thread, two strands may be first twisted together in the same or in the opposite direction to the spinning twist; after which the once-doubled thread is “cleared,” folded, and three strands of twofold yarn are twisted in the opposite direction to that employed in the first operation. In some machines folding and twisting proceed simultaneously, and some are furnished with an automatic stop motion. But when twisting two threads together to oppose the spinning twist, the failure of one causes the other to untwist and break, therefore, under such circumstances a stop motion is unnecessary.
Intermittent doublers are known as twinners, and these are of two kinds, namely, English and French. In the former the spindles are fitted in a stationary rail, but the creel, containing the cops or ring spools, is mounted upon a carriage and moves in and out, as in Hargreaves’ spinning jenny (see Spinning). French twinners have a stationary creel, and the spindles move in and out with the carriage, as in the spinning mule. The material to be folded is often subjected to the action of steam in order to render it less resilient, after which it is mounted upon skewers in the creel, and two or three threads are passed to each spindle to be twisted together and formed into a cop. Between the creel and the spindles all the strands are kept equally tense by drawing them over flannel-covered boards and under porcelain weights. For wet doubling, the strands pass through a trough containing water, and the flannel surfaces are also wet.
Clearing.—After the first, or the final, doubling it is often necessary to remove lumps, imperfect knots and loose fibres from a thread. This is accomplished by passing each through a slit, or clearer, whose width is adjusted to the diameter of the thread to be treated. By this means anything which gives a thread abnormal bulk will be prevented from passing the slit. Once through the slit, a thread is coiled upon a friction-driven, double or single-headed bobbin. If the former, the coils are evenly laid; if the latter, they are disposed into a bottle shape. Or, again, cheeses may be wound.
Gassing.—In cases where a thread with a smooth surface is required the extending ends of fibres must be burned off. Thus: each thread from a creel is drawn over a tension rod to two freely mounted pulleys, having parallel grooves cut in their surfaces and axes in the same horizontal plane. After bending a thread forward and backward in the grooves of both pulleys, it passes through a Bunsen flame and is coiled upon a tube, which is held against the face of a rotating drum, while a vibrating guide distributes the thread across the tube. The gas-burner is situated midway between the grooved pulleys, and so mounted beneath the thread that it will automatically swivel sideways and thus move the flame away from a stationary thread. Winding begins slightly before the flame moves beneath a thread, and the rapid motion of the latter permits the flame to burn off undesirable matters without injuring the thread.
Reeling.—Doubled or gassed yarn may be wound upon warpers’ bobbins and made into warps for the loom, or it may be reeled into
