Flax Spinning

technological process for obtaining yarn (thread) from flax fiber. The raw material for flax spinning comes in the form of a long scutched fiber (in handfuls or a sliver) or short factory fiber obtained as a by-product of scutching and from short-stem stock or flax straw. Flax spinning includes processing on combing and carding machines, drawing frames, roving machines (partially), and spinning frames.

Fiber in handfuls is processed on flax hackling machines. The handfuls are hackled twice, from both ends, by hackle card webs, and then are placed in a continuous ribbon (with a definite linear displacement) on the spread board. Fiber in a sliver passes through a combing machine. With such processing the output of long carded fiber is increased by 50-80 percent. Before carding, short flax fiber and tow is mixed, opened, emulsified, and shaped into a sliver. Flow lines with a high degree of mechanization, all the way to mechanized opening, make working conditions easier and increase the productivity of this most labor-intensive system of spinning.

After hackling the flax fiber is processed on drawing frames where the sliver is gradually thinned and made more even in cross section. The prespinning cycle also includes a roving machine if the yarn is being produced by the wet method. Unlike the sliver, the roving from a roving machine has a slight twist.

Before spinning the bobbins of roving are treated chemically (scoured and bleached). This makes separation easier when fibers of the roving are being drawn into elementary fibrils in the drawing device of the spinning frame; this ensures fine, even yarn. With the dry method spinning is done from the sliver. In this case the yarn is formed from industrial fibers and is more coarse. For both the wet and the dry methods of spinning flax fiber ring spinning frames are most common. It is also possible to use centrifugal spinning frames, which make it possible to increase the speed of spinning and the amount of the product. Linen yarn is used to make fabrics for various purposes. Adding various kinds of chemical fibers to the flax fiber improves the quality of the yarn and linen fabrics and enables the processes of flax spinning to proceed more smoothly.