Center on application of fiber processing technologies and improve technological level of fiber processing machines
Traditional fiber processing includes natural fibers like cotton, wool, linen and yarn. As chemical fibers are increasing in recent years, raw material structure of fiber processing industry has experienced changes, so traditional fiber processing craft and technology must be correspondingly improved.
The traditional “large quantity and broad range”cotton spinning industry is not just spinning cottons into cloths but it is changing with raw material structure.
Over the several decades, cotton spinning process technological equipment has experienced profound changes, namely three major upgrading in succession. Taking traditional cotton spinning as an example, products were “the same over the ten years” with minor changes forty years old, “A”-head was used for cotton spinning equipment and weaving equipment still used “1” head. Not until the reform and opening up did it start changing, from “A”head to “FA” series. Production performance, technological level and production efficiency were all improved by a large margin, especially interconnection of mechanization, automation and single machine. Mechanical technological level of spinning machines was significantly improved, and traditional blowing and cotton carding were already promoted to combination of blending, opening, blowing and carding, and yield per unit per hour was elevated from 28 kg at the initial stage of the reform and opening up to 100 - 120 kg. From sliver lap machine to combing machine, combining machine kept over 400 embedding times and noil dropping rate reached the standard. Then roving yarn was connected to fine yarn, and long 1820-spindle spinning machine was attached with collective dogging device so that spun yarn was connected to automatic winder, cone detection and packaging formed an automatic line, which relieved physical labor, saved labor force and improved efficiency greatly. Before the reform and opening up, fixed number of employees in the ten thousand-spindle enterprises checked and approved during the period of planned economy was 691 and that in 30,000-spindle scale enterprises was 1,768, and now rated number of production workers in tenthousand-spindle-scale enterprises is kept below 30.
Weaving machines went through even greater changes, winding machine, warping machine and sizing machine were updated automatically in separate units, new machine types were manufactured, and production quantity of shuttle looms was reduced and even they were replaced by shuttleless looms. Development of shuttleless looms started from universal rapier looms to high-end rapier looms, multiterm rapier looms, double-layer velvet piling rapier looms and to high-end air-jet looms, water-jet looms and gripper looms, which adapted to change of raw material structures weaving through spinning. High-speed development of multiple kinds of shuttleless looms has narrowed the gap with the world level. While developing shuttleless looms, the textile industry has realized complete production of beam racks, upper and lower beam devices matched for looms.
When traditional spinning process technologies were developed and improved, process technologies of rotor spinning machines, vortex spinning machines and air-jet spinning machines as well as spinning process technology of jeans were developed. Adapting to weaving requirements of hydrophobic fabrics, a complete production line was formed. Knitting machinery also enjoyed high-speed development while traditional looms were developed. Before the reform and opening up, knitting machinery could only be used to weave civil undershirts, gloves and socks, and there was only one type of warp knitting machine which could weave mosquito nets or low-grade ordinary chemical & blended fabrics not needing cloth coupons. Restricted by the environment, improvement could not be made, even though foreign countries could transfer their tech- nologies, domestic production was impossible for all kinds of reasons. At the time, computerized flat knitting machine was used for production in a military enterprise after the technology was introduced, products could not be produced for many years, and only after emergence of township enterprises and private enterprises, the wisdom and efforts of everyone were pooled to tackle difficulties and obtain high-speed development. Now annual output of medium and top-grade computerized flat knitting machines is over 100,000, and they are best sellers abroad. Multifunctional warp knitting machines were also produced by state-owned, private and foreign enterprises simultaneously with mutual technological promotion. Now warp knitting machines have realized intelligent production. One intelligent warp knitting machine can simultaneously produce multiple types of seamless underwear, gloves and socks through the setting of the technological control system.
There are also rough processing, finish processing and semi-worsted spinning processing equipment for rough wool fabric, worsted wool fabric, woolen yarn, camel hair and yak hair blended with raw materials and raw rabbit hair in fiber processing machinery. With these equipment, we have adapted to development of wool textile industry. With silk processing machinery especially development of imitated silk fabrics, all of process technology equipment serve development of these industries.
Its noteworthy that dedicated basic parts are developed during the product development process. Technological level of basic parts like cradle carriage, spindle, roller and steel collar is synchronous with development of main machines. The supported auxiliary machines and quality detection and control instruments for online detection of terminal products have obtained synchronous development.
Now, fiber processing machinery is developing towards intelligent production and management based on accelerated mechanization, continuance and automation.
Center on social consumption demands and develop yarn fabric dyeing & printing and post-finishing machinery
Dyeing & printing and post-finishing machinery of yarn fabrics have experienced the process from capacity increase to adaption to changes and to realization of energy conservation and emission reduction and continuous improvement of processes and technological equipment since the reform and opening up.
Technological equipment for dyeing & printing and post-finishing processes of fabrics was under single-variety production (white, black, blue and gray) for a long term before the reform and opening up. Even so, production of hot melting dyeing machines representing production capacity should be controlled as planned. After the reform and opening up, production capacity should be strengthened urgently in order to adapt to market demands, complete pre-dyeing & printing treatment, dyeing, printing and post-finishing equipment were exported and some of them were domestically configured, and they were supplied according annual output of 10 million-15 million meters. Afterwards, rapid development was realized only after process technological equipment were gradually opened, including corduroy production line and dyeing & printing process production line of polyester filaments and jeans, traditional dyeing & printing production line of polyester fabrics and complete process technological equipment of knitwear dyeing & printing. Dyeing and printing were the emphases in the development. Dyeing developed into a series of products with complete varieties like tank type, pipeline type, rope shape, open width and multiple kinds of overflow dyeing, airflow dyeing, high temperature, high pressure, normal temperature, normal pressure, etc, and small liquor ratio dyeing was realized.
Printing is a critical technology. Re-innovation has been realized by introducing, digesting and absorbing technologies based on independent research and development. Traditional roller printing was knocked out. Some dyeing & printing enterprises put these products into museums for commemoration. Then flat screen printing machines came into being, and some wide machines were applied to bed sheets and decorative fabrics; breadth was adapted to special fabrics. Multiple machine models could be selected by users like scraper type, magnetic bar type, electromagnet type and fixed magnet type, etc.
Then circular screen printing machines emerged with multiple breadths like large-diameter circular net, small-diameter circular net, scraper type, magnetic bar type, etc., as well as cold transfer printing, thermal transfer printing, garment piece printing, cold rolling printing, etc. Nowadays popular Inkjet printing has been promoted for many years. Printing is not only used in clothing and decoration but also used in ceramic printing.
Post-finishing process equipment after printing obtained synchronous rapid development like sanding and fuzzing of knitted fabrics, single-face gigging and double-face gigging of chemical fiber filaments, softening of polyester filament yarns as well as fabric layer processing.
In the development process of main machines, technological levels of four unit machines: rolling, rinsing, steaming and drying were simultaneously elevated. Dedicated basic parts for dyeing & printing equipment like registering device, edge suction device, breadth expansion device, twitch roller and cloth clip chain obtained synchronous development, so did the control systems of single machines and combined machines, online detection and detection of terminal products.
Now the main task of dyeing & printing and post-finishing technological equipment is to make new contributions to energy conservation, emission reduction and consumption reduction.