5. Name all the processes involved in serial order for making cotton fabrics from the raw cotton.
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Answer:
PROCESSING THE CROP
The cotton gin is where cotton fiber is separated from the cotton seed. The first step in the ginning process is when the cotton is vacuumed into tubes that carry it to a dryer to reduce moisture and improve the fiber quality. Then it runs through cleaning equipment to remove leaf trash, sticks and other foreign matter.
Ginning is accomplished by one of two methods. Cotton varieties with shorter staple or fiber length are ginned with saw gins. This process involves the use of circular saws that grip the fibers and pull them through narrow slots.
The seeds are too large to pass through these openings, resulting in the fibers being pulled away from the seed. Long fiber cottons must be ginned in a roller gin because saw gins can damage their delicate fibers. The roller gin was invented in India centuries ago and this concept is still used in modern gins. Long staple cottons, like Pima, separate from the seed more easily than Upland varietie. A roller gin uses a rough roller to grab the fiber and pull it under a rotating bar with gaps too small for the seed to pass.
The raw fiber, now called lint, makes its way through another series of pipes to a press where it is compressed into bales(lint packaged for market), banded with eight steel straps, sampled for classing, wrapped for protection then loaded onto trucks for shipment to storage yards, textile mills and foreign countries. The cotton industry has adopted a standard for a bale of cotton, 55 inches tall, 28 inches wide, and 21 inches thick, weighing approximately 500 pounds. A bale meeting these requirements is called a universal density bale. This is enough cotton to make 325 pairs of denim jeans.
Every bale of cotton is classed from a sample taken after its formation. The classing of cotton lint is the process of measuring fiber characteristics against a set of standards (grades). Classing is done by experts, called classers, who use scientific instruments to judge the samples of lint. All standards are established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Once the quality of the cotton bale is determined, pricing parameters are set and the lint may be taken to market. Cotton marketing is the selling and buying of cotton lint. Cotton is priced in cents per pound when sold and the price is negotiated according to the cotton's quality. After baling, the cotton lint is hauled to either storage yards, textile mills, or shipped to foreign countries. The cotton seed is delivered to a seed storage area. Where it will remain until it is loaded into trucks and transported to a cottonseed oil mill or directly for livestock feed.
Textile mills purchase cotton and receive the bales from gin yards or cotton warehouses. These mills start with raw bales of cotton and process them in stages until they produce yarn (fibers twisted into threads used in weaving or knitting) or cloth (fabric or material constructed from weaving or knitting).
The first stage is in the opening room. Here, bales are opened and laid in a line on the floor, side by side, near a cotton opening machine. This machine travels along the line of opened bales, pulling fibers to be sent to a mixing machine and then on to the carding system.
Carding is the process of pulling the fibers into parallel alignment to form a thin web. High speed electronic equipment with wire toothed rollers perform this task. The web of fibers is eventually condensed into a continuous, untwisted, rope-like strand called a sliver, (pronounced slyver).
These slivers then continue to a combing machine. Here, the fibers shorter than half-inch and impurities are removed from the cotton.
This process makes the sliver smoother so more uniform yarns can be produced. The drawing or pulling of this sliver is next.
The sliver is drawn out to a thinner strand and given a slight twist to improve strength, then wound on bobbins (spools wound with the thread-like product for storage). Having completed this process, it is now called roving. The roving bobbins are now ready for the spinning process.
Spinning is the last process in yarn manufacturing. Today's mills draw and twist the roving into yarn and place it on bobbins. They do this quite efficiently. A large, modern mill can produce enough yarn or thread in 30 days to wrap around the earth 2300 times or go to and return from the moon 235 times. With the use of automatic winding, the yarn bobbins are transferred to larger bobbins called cheese cones. These cheese cones can be stored until they are needed in the weaving process.
Explanation: