Spinning the Web > Industry > Machines & processes

During spinning, the strand of cotton is reduced in thickness in preparation for the final conversion of the fibres into yarn form. This process reduces the strand thickness to the required level, binds the fibres together with twist and winds the yarn onto a suitable package or bobbin. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, yarn was spun either on a ring or mule frame. The mule draws the cotton cord from spindles between rollers of varying speeds, drawing out into an even finer thread, twisted onto 'cops', resulting in yarn - spun thread. A mule of 1,200 spindles could spin around 4,000 miles of yarn a day.

Checking the yarn

Having produced the yarn, it is customary to pass it through a rewinding process to inspect it and remove spinning faults. Also, the individual yarn packages or bobbins will be assembled into larger packages for the next process to remove the need for handling large numbers of smaller yarn quantities and to increase subsequent processing efficiency (some modern spinning techniques avoid this necessity).

Folding and Twisting

One possibility for the yarn, at this stage, is a process known as folding or twisting which twists two or more single yarns together to make plied structures such as sewing threads and industrial yarns.

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