Part 15 (1/2)

At the present time, therefore, a contest between the two rival systems of continuous spinning which were in bitter antagonism over a century ago, is waging a more fiercely contested fight than at any previous time.

As the case stands to-day, the mule is retained for nearly all the best and finest yarns as yet found; the most suitable for them, just as it was when Crompton got 25s. per pound for spinning fine muslin yarns on his first mule.

In many cases, also, yarn is specially required to be spun upon the bare spindle as on a mule, as for instance when used as weft and put into the shuttle of a loom. It is probably the very greatest defect of the ring frame that it can only, with great difficulty, be made to form a good cop of yarn on the bare spindle, although thousands of pounds have been spent on experimenting in that direction. How soon it may be accomplished with commercial success cannot be known, as a great number of individuals are constantly working in that direction. If it does come about, there can be no doubt that the ring frame will receive a still further impetus.

Even now, for medium counts of yarn it is much more productive than the mule, owing to its being a continuous spinner. Another vast advantage that it possesses is the extreme simplicity of its parts and work as compared with the mule. Because of this, women and girls are invariably employed on the ring frames, whereas it requires skilled and well-paid workmen for the mules.

=The Combing Machine.=--As compared with the Scutcher, the Carding Engine and Mule, the Comber is a much more modern machine. Combing may be defined as being the most highly perfected application of the carding principle.

The chief objects aimed at by the comber are:--To extract all fibres below a certain length; to make the fibres parallel; and to extract any fine impurities that may have escaped the scutching and carding processes.

It is worthy of note that although nearly all the great inventions relating to cotton-spinning have been brought out by Englishmen, the combing machine is a notable exception. It was invented a few years prior to 1851 by Joshua Heilman, who was born at Mulhouse, the princ.i.p.al seat of the Alsace cotton manufacture, in 1796.

Like Samuel Crompton--the inventor of the mule--Joshua Heilman appears to have possessed the inventive faculty in a high degree, and he received an excellent training in mathematics, mechanical drawing, practical mechanics, and other subjects calculated to a.s.sist him in his career as an inventor.

Heilman was the inventor of several useful improvements in connection with spinning and weaving machinery, but the invention of the comber was undoubtedly his greatest achievement.

He was brought up in comparatively easy circ.u.mstances, and married a wife possessing a considerable amount of money; but all that both of them possessed was swallowed up by Heilman's expenses in connection with his inventions, and he himself was only raised from poverty again by the success of the comber shortly before his death, his wife having died in the midst of their poverty many years previously.

After Heilman became possessed of the idea of inventing a combing machine, he laboured incessantly at the project for several years, first in his native country and subsequently in England. The firm of Sharpe & Roberts, formerly so famous in connection with the self-actor mule, made him a model, which, however, did not perform what Heilman required.

Afterwards he returned again to his native Alsace still possessed with the idea, and finally it is said that the successful inspiration came to him whilst watching his daughters comb out their long hair. The ultimate result was that he invented a machine which was shown at the great exhibition of London in 1851 and immediately attracted the attention of the textile manufacturers of Lancas.h.i.+re and Yorks.h.i.+re.

Large sums of money were paid him by certain of the Lancas.h.i.+re cotton spinners for its exclusive use in the cotton trade. Certain of the woollen masters of Yorks.h.i.+re did the same, for its exclusive application to their trade, and it was also adopted for other textiles, although Heilman himself only lived a short time after his great success.

It must be understood that the comber is only used by a comparatively small proportion of the cotton spinners of the world. For all ordinary purposes a sufficiently good quality of yarn can be made without the comber, and no other machine in cotton spinning adds half as much as the comber to the expense of producing cotton yarn from the raw material.

To show this point with greater force, it may be mentioned that the comber may make about 17 per cent. of waste, which is approximately as much as all the other machines in the mill put together would make.

Its use, however, is indispensable in the production of the finest yarns, since no other machine can extract short fibre like the comber.

It is seldom used for counts of yarn below 60's and often as fine yarns as 100's or more are made without the comber. In England its use is chiefly centred in the localities of Bolton, Manchester, and Bollington, although there is a little combing in Preston, Ashton under Lyne, and other places.

Perhaps its greatest value consists in the fact that its use enables fine yarns to be made out of cotton otherwise much too poor in quality for the work; this being rendered possible chiefly by the special virtue possessed by the comber of extracting all fibres of cotton below a certain length. This of course has led to the increased production and consequently reduced price of the better qualities of yarn.

Reverting now to the Heilman Comber as it stands to-day, an excellent idea of the machine as a whole will be gathered from the photograph in Fig. 31.

There are usually six small laps being operated upon simultaneously in one comber. Each small lap being from 7-1/2 inches to 10-1/2 inches wide, being placed on fluted wooden rollers behind the machine, is slowly unwound by frictional contact therewith, and the sheet of cotton thus unwound is pa.s.sed down a highly polished convex guide-plate to a pair of small fluted steel rollers.

Both the wooden and the steel rollers have an intermittent motion, as indeed have also all the chief parts of the machine concerned in the actual combing of the cotton. The rollers, during each intermittent movement, may project forward about 3/8 of an inch length of thin cotton lap.

By this forward movement the cotton fibres are pa.s.sed between a pair of nippers which has been for the instant opened on purpose to allow of this action. Immediately the cotton has pa.s.sed between the nippers, the feed rollers stop for an instant and the jaws of the nippers shut and hold the longer of the cotton fibres in a very firm manner.

Image: FIG. 31.--Combing machine.

The shorter fibres, however, are not held so firmly, and are now combed away from the main body of the fibres by fine needles being pa.s.sed through them. The needles are fixed in a revolving cylinder and are graduated in fineness and in closeness of setting, so that while the first rows of needles may be about 20 to the inch, the last rows may contain as many as 80 to the inch, there being from 15 to 17 rows of needles in an ordinary comber.

The short fibres being combed out by the needles are stripped therefrom, and pa.s.sed by suitable mechanism to the back of the machine to be afterwards used in the production of lower counts of yarn.