Carding machines | Php spinning mills ltd | made by carded sliver|
Carding is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibres to produce a continuous web or sliver suitable for subsequent processing.[1] This is achieved by passing the fibres between differentially moving surfaces covered with "card clothing", a firm flexible material embedded with metal pins. It breaks up locks and unorganised clumps of fibre and then aligns the individual fibres to be parallel with each other. In preparing wool fibre for spinning, carding is the step that comes after teasing.[2]
Science historian Joseph Needham ascribes the invention of bow-instruments used in textile technology to India.[4] The earliest evidence for using bow-instruments for carding comes from India (2nd century CE).[4] These carding devices, called kaman (bow) and dhunaki, would loosen the texture of the fibre by the means of a vibrating string.[4]
At the turn of the eighteenth century, wool in England was being carded using pairs of hand cards, in a two-stage process: 'working' with the cards opposed and 'stripping' where they are in parallel.[5]
In 1748 Lewis Paul of Birmingham, England, invented two hand driven carding machines. The first used a coat of wires on a flat table moved by foot pedals. This failed. On the second, a coat of wire slips was placed around a card which was then wrapped around a cylinder.[5]Daniel Bourn obtained a similar patent in the same year, and probably used it in his spinning mill at Leominster, but this burnt down in 1754.[6] The invention was later developed and improved by Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton. Arkwright's second patent (of 1775) for his carding machine was subsequently declared invalid (1785) because it lacked originality.[7]
