Clothing makes a statement and ultimately people are judged by their fashion selections the minute they step outside. Fashion is no longer only for the rich and thanks to the development of fashion retailing. It is available for the majority at affordable prices. Fashion clothing is fast moving from a once utilitarian and functional product towards an inspirational and more psychologically uplifting aspect of consumer purchasing. Fashion is not only to be found at ‘haute couture’ fashion shows, but can be found on the street or even in charity or second hand shops. Good fashion buyers leave no stone unturned as to where they seek inspiration for the next fashion trend. People buy the newest styles to establish themselves as individuals, but the styles aren’t new for very long. Soon they turn into trends, with everyone parading around town in the same clothes.
Growing levels of disposable income among the middle class are the major forces driving the growth of the fashion and lifestyle segments in the country.
Opportunities for value addition at spinning stage
If the textiles and clothing production need to be value aded, it should not be stopped with applying new fabric patterns or innovative garment designs… or with just new colour forecasting or product marketing formats.
If looked back along the production value chain, value addition scope might be discovered opening up at the yarn stage.
One such value addition in cotton yarn production that has begun to sway the yarn market of late is the rediscovery of ‘slub’ yarn or the ‘effect’ yarn, as it is technically called in the trade.
There are endless uses of slub yarn in our life, Slub yarn are used mainly in fashion industry, ready made garment industry, high-end shirting materials, value-added knitwear, home textiles, woolen knitting industry, furnishing industry and handicraft industry, etc., for creating eye catching designs in fabrics and other end products. Some of end products images are given below for information.
Now a days denim fabric is made from warp yarn which is at least 30 per cent novelty cotton yarn having irregularly spaced effects (e.g., slubs) about one-half inch to two inches in length.
According to industry sources, annual growth rate in demand of slub yarn will be 5 to 7 per cent globally. In India, since the growth has just begun it is expected to be in the range of 15-20 per cent for the next 3-4 years.
Tirupur in spotlight
Tirupur has particularly emerged as the favored source point for fashion-oriented knitwear products by global garment chains/retailers and is in the focus of fancy yarn producers. The knitwear sector is billed as the emerging market for slub yarn consumption after denim fabrics makers.
LRT has predicted the demand well in advance and joined hands with CAIPO, Italy, a forerunner in slub yarn manufacturing systems, which cater the needs of this market since 1963.
Lakshmi-Caipo, leader in slub yarn system provider, successfully installed 1,80,000 spindles in a short period of two and a half years.
Defining the slub yarn
Slub yarn or fancy yarn is yarn whose structure or fiber composition differs from the normal smooth yarn. Fancy yarn usually has a multitude of thick places or thin places – so-called slubs – whose diameter is significantly larger or smaller than the diameters of the yarn sections lying between the slubs – the so-called base yarn produced during the process of yarn spinning at pre-programmed intervals to make the yarn by itself designed yarn, catching the leading garment labels all over the world.
This engineered yarn pattern is produced using specific ‘slub’ attachment in the regular ring spinning frames or open-end spinning machinery along with special software package.
Technological demand
The challenges faced by any slub attachment manufacturers are to avoid thin places after and before the slub and to have maximum strenghth in the yarn.
For this Lakshmi Caipo uses tailor made servo motors which have quickest response time available in the market. The following example further elaborates on this point.
To make a slub pattern of slub/meter 5, slub length 5 cm, pause length 15 cm and slub thickness 2 times of the base count on Ring frame. (Pause length- distance between the slubs).
Count 40 Ne, Avg speed 17500, TPi 23.94, Roving hank 1 Ne, Mechanical draft 44, B.D 1.14. Yarn delivery rate 18.56 m/min.
From the diagram,
Step 1: To form a perfect slub of above parameters, motor- (which is driving the back and middle roller) speed has to be increased according to the slub thickness from the standard or nominal speed at which it is producing normal yarn.
Step 2: Again increased speed has to be maintained for a particular time according to the slub length.
Step 3: Finally, speed has to be reduced from the increased state to nominal speed
All the above three steps should be happened within a short time of 0.16 seconds.
In the final step, while the speed is reducing to nominal, it should not reduce further, if it does, it will create a thinner yarn after every slub. Due to the gear play and TPi given, it will make the thinner yarn further weaker.
Probable reasons for above thin place are poor feed back from the rollers, improper analyzing and slow response time from controllers and motors.
About Lakshmi Caipo product
Due to the vast experience and continuous research CAIPO has overcome the above limitations through CAN BUS TECH, quick responding servo amplifier, servo motors and high resolution encoders.
Unique features of Lakshmi Caipo attachments are:
Two long Ring Frames for Multi slub with separate programs or 2 short frames for multislub, Multi count, Multi twist with totally different programs can be made. Gear box designed according to the spinning frame, no thin places after the slubs and higher production rate compared to competitor systems.
Advanced programming software:
Program can be done by the following three ways either in PC or CAIPO panel
• Feeding the individual slub parameters – pause length, slub length, slub thickness and twist % totally 500 lines, 2000 variables – very large compared to any other systems
• Minimum and maximum value of slub parameters can also be fed to get a unique pattern of slubs.
• From fabric sample parameters like EPI, PPI, fabric width and no of slubs in the fabric sample
Dobby stimulation viewer
For the programmed slub pattern one can see the Black table, Loom slub distribution, fabric simulation, knitting simulation at an instant and can be e-mailed as E- samples, which is much more advanced than any other competitor.
With this software’s one can bring all his imagination into a real fabric in a short time without any hard waste.
The main aspect of loom slub distribution, one can alter the particular slub position in the fabric itself, if he is not satisfied with the design of slub distribution on the fabric, so that the program changes accordingly.
Large control screen which has provision to visualize the working slub parameters, speed of the machine, slub deviation in on-line itself. If there is any deviation from the program the control stops the production instantly.
The LCSTU can hold 40 programs & on the software up to 0999 programs and the same program can be reproduced after several years.
Slub shorter than a fiber length is technically not possible by any attachment. However appearance of the short slub in the fabric is possible by adjusting the acceleration and deceleration of the slub due to program.
Plus 300% to minus 30% of normal yarn twist is possible
Up to 5 times of the normal yarn. Technically up to 10 times of normal is also possible by the system in steps of 0.01.
Since manufacturing done at Coimbatore a huge stock of parts available in Coimbatore with a huge service back-up from Voltas Ltd., Supersales and Lakshmi Caipo.