The Textile Production Process 

The production process for textiles involves several steps, which are described below: 

Raw material (bales of both cotton and synthetic fibers) is fed into machines called openers and pickers, where it is cleaned of waste or any other impurity, and the fibers are shredded. 

The shredded fiber is then fed into mills where the raw material is mixed to form rolls. 

The next process is carding, which involves the transformation of textile fibers into strands of about four centimeters in diameter that are rolled to a length of up to 5,000 meters. During this stretching, long strands are separated from short or broken ones.

 

The strands generated from the stretching are drawn through a roller press, which presses and stretches to give volume to the material. 

The next step is combing, in which the strands are pressed and cleaned into new strands that have a smaller diameter. They are stretched again and four strands twisted together to form the yarn.

 

In the re-stretching, the yarn resulting from the combing is mixed, in cases where it is necessary (for example, cotton and polyester), to form a new fiber. Here also thinner fibers are obtained by the new stretching.

 

Next, the yarns follow a process of torsion and tension on moving frames which spin the yarn onto plastic or metal bobbins. In order to give the yarns greater resistance, they undergo a final stretching and twisting as they are wound on the bobbins. Finally, in the coning process, the yarn is improved by removing impurities such as thick, short, dirty or torn strands.

The raw materials used during the previous processes include, among others, natural and synthetic fibers, mineral oils, and emulsifying and foaming preparations.

 

In the case of Type A fabric, manufacturing finished thread may include moisture-based processes of pre-treatment and treatment, including the processes of dyeing and drying, then the coning, piping, curling, spooling and bobbin winding for synthetic threads, also known as "finishing."

The weaving process consists of weaving the yarns of the warp and weft with each other, with the objective of transforming the fibers or yarns into fabrics. Depending on the fabric you want, a design is developed that includes the proportion of yarn and the structure of the cloth.

Processes such as bobbin winding, torsion and warping are preparatory operations that combine numerous short threads into a smaller number of continuous strands.

In the process of warping, thread on spools is passed to other spools. The objective is load the spool with the necessary length of and determined number of threads. For example, in order to obtain a roll of woven fabric, the loom is loaded with an average of 1,200 threads, then the header is placed, the number of turns and tension for the process is measured, and finally the required work order is completed. If the raw material arrives to the plant as rolls of already woven fabric, these processes will not be necessary.

 

Sufficient moisture conditions and a temperature favorable to maintaining these conditions are controlled according to the specifications of each material being processed.

Weaving is a continuous process which can be divided into two categories: weaving and knitting. 

- Weaving involves the interlacing of two sets of threads to each other: the warp and the weft. The warp are held taut and in parallel order by means of a loom. The loom is warped (or dressed) with the warp threads passing through heddles on two or more harnesses. The warp threads are moved up or down by the harnesses creating a space called the shed. The weft thread is wound onto spools called bobbins and passed through the shed using a pirn. In this way, the threads are intertwined at right angles to form the cloth.

- Knitting may be done with a single yarn which is formed into interlocking loops with the help of hooked needles. The manufacture of knitted fabrics using multiple machines requires needles, needle holders and carrying pieces for the yarn. The order of interlacing, the way the knit is formed, and the types of needles and yarn determine the type of the resulting fabric. An important feature of this type of fabric is its ability to stretch in any direction.