After the chain of cards is placed on the card-cylinder and the pattern-card, which just covers one face of the cylinder, is brought in contact with the needles projecting through the needle-board, those needles which are opposite the holes cut in the card pass through and enter the perfitratimis in the cylinder as if no card were there. while wherever there was no hole cut the needle is forced back, and with it the top of the hook which it governs, to a position so that the griffe. f, 1, as it is raised. V, P, passes the hooks and the knives only engage and lift the hooks which have not been pushed hack by the card: and every hook in the machine which has not been pressed back is raised by the griffe and with it the harness attached to it and the warp-threads which it controls. Thus it is obvious that any desired interlacing of the threads in the fabric can be obtained by the way in which the pattern-cards are perforated, each separate card regulating the warp-threads for the entrance of one thread of tilling, and there being as many cards necessary as there arc fill ing-threads in one repeat of the pattern; some very elaborate designs have required the use of 20,000 to 30.000 cards for a single design.
There have been many different looms pro duced to weave special fabrics. all embodying the three principal movements necessary to the process of weaving. Broadly speaking. looms are classed as narrow looms and brood looms, the former being built to produce fabric, up to forty-eight inches in width, the latter up to one hundred or more inches in width. There are special looms for carpets and rugs, and looms specially arranged for weaving seamless bags and tubing. such as lawn-hose or lire-hose is made from. There are narroir-fabrie looms arranged to weave tape, and ribbon,: one locn-frame supports the harness :and ineehanism for con trolling them, and a, number of separate warp, are arranged side by sidle—sometimes as many as forty and woven simultaneously. The special feature of looms of this description is that the shuttles ate passed through the sheds by a posi tive motion at a uniform velocity instead of being driven through with pieker-sticks; c r the tilling may be carried through the shed with a needle attachment instead of a shuttle.
In the swirel-loom, by the introdnetion of a special filling interlacing with a small section of the warp instead of extending from selvedge to selvedge, as the regular filling does. the weaver is enabled to produce special striped or figured effects; the attachment for manipulat ing this special filling-thread is so arranged that certain filling-carrying devices may be brought into the line of the open shed when the special tilling is to be introduced and the shuttle carrying the tegular filling stopped until the special tilling is inserted. when the attachment
is removed from the shed automatically, and the • regular filling for the groundwork of the fabric is again passed through its shed.
There are three appliances of importance which. while not parts of the loom proper, are to be found in use on all looms, whether hand or power—the loom-harness, the loom-rced, and the shutt/e. The /oom-borm•s may be a set of two parallel rods somewhat longer than the fabric is to be woven in width, un which are arranged twine hcolds or heildles, with eyes at the centre for the warp-thread; or a skeleton frame on which are played wire peddles: or the Jacquard harness. which has already been de scribed. The loom-reed. though originally con structed from pieces of reed. is a series of thin pieces of flattened wire inserted at right angles in two parallel strips of wood which are from three to five inches apart, according to the fabrics on which they are to be used; the wires are spaced equally over the whole length of the reed. is usually longer than the loom harness, and the reed is nearly always designated by the number of spaces to one ineL. The loom shank is of hard wood, generally in the shape of a prism one to two inches square and ft., In a three to 11'1'0 inches apart. :iecording to the fabric to be produced. and reduced to a point at each end. tipped with metal; this prism is hol lowed out not unlike a small boat. and the till ing. usually arranged on a tithe or bobbin. is secured on a spindle in the cavity in such a way that the filling-thread may be pulled off from the small end of the bobbin through the eye of the shuttle, Consult : Posselt. 7'ext ile Machinery Relating to Wearing (Philadelphia. 19011 ; Byrne, Progress of Inrention in the V ine tcenth Century (New York. 19(10) Ashenhurst. 'Wearing and Designing for Textile Fabrics (Lon don, I,SS71; Brown, Practical Treatise of the roast ruction of the Power Loom (Dundee, 1887) ; Barlow, The History and Principles of Fearing by Hand and by Power (London, 1870) ; Posselt, Jacquard Machine Analyzed and Explained (Philadelphia, 1893) ; also Patent Of fice Reports. See NN EASING.