MACHINES FOR PREPARING WOOL, ETC. FOR SPINNING.
we now turn our attention to thc machines for the preparation of wool fibre, we have first to consider the apparatus for cleaning the wool. Figures 2 and 3 (jS/. 39) represent what are known as burring-machines, which serve to free the wool without loss from the burrs that frequently adhere to it. The effective part of such machines is a cylinder provided with fine steel combs set tangentially, upon whose periphery the wool is so brushed that the burrs lie free upon the outside and are knocked off by a quickly revolving knife-roller.
Wool-washing Machinc.—After the locks of wool have been opened and cleaned of impurities in the burring-machine, the wool is transferred to the washing-apparatus, which serves for the removal of the oily sub stances adhering to the wool. To dissolve the adhering fat or " suint " the wool is treated with warm soapy water.
The wool-washing machine (jig. 4) consists of a series of stationary rakes or racks, alternating with movable ones, which are actuated by a crank-motion and arranged in a long box partly filled with scouring-liquor. Such machines are built with one, two, or three bowls. The liquor in the first bowl soon becomes dirty and must be drawn off. When this is done, the liquor from the second bowl is drawn, by means of an injector attached to the side of the machine, into the first bowl, and a new liquor is prepared for the second bowl. In a three-bowl machine this process is used between the second and third bowls. In some instances the wool is first scoured, and, if making wool-dyed fabrics, colored, before it is burr-picked. In most instances the wool is colored before being carded and spun. If col ored after scouring, it is submitted to the action of the hydro-extractor (fi/. 38, jigs. 6, 7). Figure 6 represents one of these machines operated by belt and friction cones, and Figure 7 a similar one operated by a direct acting steam-engine. After the wool is colored and repeatedly washed, or only scoured—•in which condition it would be used either for piece-dyed goods or white flannels, etc.—it is submitted to the wool-drying machine.
INW-picker.—After being thoroughly dried the wool is subjected to the common picker or opening-machine (bl. 39, jig. 1), by which it is loosened or opened. In a semi-cylindrical casing there revolves a large cylinder having strong iron spikes, to which the wool is supplied by means of a feeding-apparatus consisting of an endless apron of wooden slats and fluted rollers, the loosened wool being thrown out through an aperture opposite the feeding-apparatus. When used for working wool moistened with oil for the carding process, this machine is technically known as the "wool picker." Wool-carding Machine.—Entirely unlike the method of cotton-roving is the process of producing rovings from the sliver of the last carding in wool, the latter being effected by an apparatus attached to the carding-engine itself. While in spinning cotton, flax, and worsted yarn the object is to produce smooth, even rovings with the separate fibres drawn straight, in spinning wool the object is to obtain a rough thread of fibres lying cross-wise and with their upper ends projecting from the surface, so that the tissue (cloth) spun from such threads will be capable of being "fulled "—that is, so that the threads lying alongside one anodic' may readily " felt" under the influence of moisture, heat, and kneading. For this reason the doubling and drawing processes are dispensed with, and the object is attained in one operation by pulling the sliver coming from the carding-engine cross-wise into roving-threads, which are then converted into roundish threads by the apparatus referred to above. This pulling apart of the fibres is effected on the periphery of the " doffing" cylinders, following immediately behind the carding-cylinder. The cyl inders are covered with narrow strips of card-clothing separated from one another by short intervals, being thus arranged to receive the wool from alternate zones on the main cylinder.