Rieter

Basic considerations

Index

Fig. 89 – The Rieter C 60 card with a width of 1 500 mm compared with a standard card

Carding engines are basically designed for processing either relatively long fibers (wool cards with carding rollers) or relatively short fibers such as those found in the usual short-staple spinning mill. Since machines of the latter type have flats circulating on an endless path, they are referred to as revolving flat cards.

The name card is derived from the Latin ‘carduus’, meaning thistle, the spiked fruit of which was used in earlier times for plucking fibers apart. The working width was usually 1 000 mm or 40 inches; Rieter recently increased it to 1 500 mm on its new C 60 card.

This is one of the reasons (out of a dozent others) for the extremely large increase in production from usually 5 kg/h to max. 120 kg/h (the last but one generation) and to about 220 kg/h for the latest generation.

Although the card used today is still the same type as that designed in 1850, its performance has been improved tremendously, mainly by some design details. The target was first of all to provide:

  • better opening of the material in front of the main cylinder;
  • far better and more even spread of fibers on the surface of the cylinder.

This was achieved by installing more opening and carding devices in front of and around the main cylinder, e.g.:

  • an opening device in the feed chute;
  • new feeding arrangement (directional feed) at the licker-in;
  • a second and a third licker-in;
  • carding bars in front of the flats and behind the flats at the cylinder.

Another means for achieving these improvements was the former Crosrol  tandem card (no longer available), which will be described in the following chapter.