MANUFACTURE.] WOOL 059 For the apparently simple operation of carding, the factory machinery is complex, delicate, and very expensive. Ordinarily it consists of three carding-engines, called respectively the scribbler, the intermediate, and the finisher, but sometimes the intermediate is omitted. In each of these there is a complicated series of card- covered cylinders of different diameters running at different rates of speed, sometimes in a contrary and sometimes in the same direction, which are engaged in contending with each other for the FIG. 4. Diagram of Scribbling Card. wool supplied to the machine, in abstracting it altogether from their neighbours, and passing it on to be again contended for and teased in the operation, and finally passed clean out of the machine. A sectional illustration (fig. 4) of the first portion of a "scribbler" will serve as an illustration of the whole operation from beginning to end. The wool is entered to the appa ratus by a travelling lattice, the supply being equalized and carefully distributed by a mechanical feed. It is caught between the lower two of a range of three feed- rollers a, revolving immediately behind which is the "licker-in" roller b, which immediately takes possession of the por tion of the feed which has fallen to the share of the lower or No. 1 feed -roller. The remainder of the feed is carried upward on the middle feed-roller, from which it is taken by the uppermost of the three rollers a, and from it the wool is delivered to the "licker-in." In this way a certain amount of preliminary blending and in termixing is accomplished. Against the licker-in revolves the "angle stripper" c, the function of which is to remove the wool from the former and deliver it over to the great breast cylinder, which re volves at a high speed (surface-velocity about f mile per minute). By the cylinder it is carried on till it comes against a small roller revolving slowly in the opposite direction, called " worker No. 1 " d, which abstracts part of the wool, and carrying it round gives it up to the somewhat smaller roller, the "stripper" e, which again delivers it to the breast cylinder. Passing on it carries the wool partly to three such sets of cylinders and rollers over which the wool passes till it is delivered. The intermediate carding-engine has two swifts, with relative workers, &c. , and the finisher has also two swifts and a condenser. In some carding-engines the swifts are provided with more than two sets of workers and strippers. This is particularly the case in a class of carding-engines provided with only one swift or cylinder of very large diameter, around which there are five sets of workers and strippers (tig. 5). The carded wool, as it leaves the last swift of the finisher card, is Condens- in the form of a continuous equally-distributed lap. To prepare it ing. for spinning, this lap must now be divided into a series of equal strips or ribbons, and these then condensed into a rounded carding or sliver sufficiently compact to bear winding on a bobbin. The condenser for doing this is attached to the finisher card, and con sists of rings or bands of card-cloth the width of the strips to be made, placed on one or on two cylinders, which rings doff the portion of the lap against which they revolve and yield it up to a stripper. These strips as they pass out are acted on by a pair of rubbers which, by a partly oscillating motion, rub the strip into the form of a carding of rounded loose untwisted fibres, which in the subsequent operation of spinning is easily drawn out to the degree of tenuity required in the yarn to be made. The mule-frame employed for spinning woollen yarns is the same Mule in principle as, but in some respects modified in action from, the spinning, spinning-mule used for fine counts of cotton yarn. The mule (fig. 6) consists of a stationary frame on which the bobbins of sliver are placed, and of a carriage which travels back and forward a distance of in all about 2 yards from the stationary frame. The carriage contains in a horizontal row the spindles which give twist to the yarn and wind it on the bobbins or paper tubes fixed on them ; FIG. 5. Single-Cylinder Carding Engine. the second worker/, and stripper g, when the same operation is re peated. Continuing its progress, the cylinder with its covering of wool next comes in contact with the "fancy" h, the teeth of which are set so as to pass a little way into those of the cylinder. Its effect is to throw the wool partly out of its teeth and prepare it for being entirely removed by the "doffer" i, which is the next roller met by the cylinder, and which, like the "fancy," revolves in a contrary direction to the breast cylinder. The angle stripper j passes the wool from the dofFer to the next cylinder, which is called a "swift," and which has the same workers, strippers, fancy and doffer rollers aa the breast cylinders. The scribbler contains FIG. 6. Wool Spinning Mule. and the complicated motions of the whoie machine are regulated by gearing and belting from head-stocks on the stationary frame. The carriage being close up to the stationary frame, the ends of the slivers are passed through a pair of small giving-off rollers and attached to the bobbins or tubes in the carriage. The carriage then begins to travel back on its rails, the slivers being simultaneously delivered to it through the rollers, at the same rate at which it travels, till, say, a yard length is given out, and as the carriage has been moving back the spindles have been revolving slowly so as to communicate some twist to the sliver; but up to this point there has been no drawing out or drafting. But now the rollers cease to give out sliver, the carriage continues travelling back, and the spindles revolve at a greatly increased rate, simultaneously drawing out the sliver and giving it the requisite twist, till, when it comes to the end of the rails over which it runs, the yard of original sliver is drawn out to 2 yards of yarn and twisted almost enough. The full twist is given while the carriage remains standing at the end ; then the spindles are reversed two or three times to unwind a small proportion of yarn which the twisting operation leaves near the point of the bobbin ; and lastly the carriage is run in to the stationary frame while the spindles wind the now finished yarn on the bobbins or tubes, an automatic arrangement securing due tension and the proper wind ing of the yarn. Yarn, as delivered from the mule in woollen-spinning, or from the Woollen throstle in the case of worsteds, is in the condition known as singles, yarn For twisting the singles into yarn of two or more ply it is wound on bobbins ; sometimes the bobbins from the spinning-frame are used direct, and placed on pegs in the twisting-frame, which is a
mechanism like the throstle, but without the arrangement for