FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to an improved apparatus for textile machinery especially the textile fibre opening and cleaning apparatus of spinning preparatory machines.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

In textile preparatory machines, the textile fibres have to be opened and cleaned to remove impurities and are converted into small tufts. As it is known , to obtain a textile yarn starting from the fibre, the fibre must undergo numerous processes, so as to free it of impurities and dirt, align the fibres and straighten them. Such processes result in the production of a fibre strip, subsequently processed. The various processes are performed by various machines in that, to obtain an optimal result, such operations need to be repeated a number of times in a progressively vigorous manner. Specifically, by way of example, for the treatment of fibre, the bale of fibre is taken up by a plucking machine, so as to obtain tufts transported by currents of air. The tuft is subsequently processed in a set of machines to remove the impurities, such as stones or non- ferrous materials mixed in with the tufts, before going to an opener, in which the tufts of fibres are opened and separated from impurities.

Subsequently, the fibre undergoes further cleaning, aligning and straightening in openers and carding machines so as to produce a strip of fibre. Currently a strong need is felt to produce fibre treatment lines suitable to process increasingly large quantities of fibre. To increase the quantities that can be processed however, it is not practical to design new machines with proportionally larger dimensions in the working width, diameter or length of the opening hooks, or increase the number of machines. Since the production of the same already involves considerable technological and production difficulties, as well as problems of space due to the size, high costs and poor quality of the processed tuft. The design of an cotton opener proves particularly important, in that it is the first machine on the treatment line, in which the fibre in tufts is opened and cleansed of the coarser impurities. The conditions in which the tufts come out of the opener have a considerable influence on the efficacy of the processes performed downline of the said opener. Specifically, it has been seen that denser flows of fibre to the opener produce outgoing fibre tufts still contaminated by impurities and greatly tangled and therefore not satisfactory for achieving good results from the further treatment downline.

Moreover textile mills undergo to process two major type of textile fibres, one is natural fibres such as cotton, wool, hemp etc., and other one is man-made fibres like polyester, viscose, nylon etc. As known, the natural fibre bales contains higher percentage of impurities when compares to man-made fibre bales. When these bales, are received by mills, it has to be opened and cleaned as much as possible to remove the impurities.

These opening and cleaning is generally performed by treating the fibres in spinning preparatory machines. Majority of said treatment is done at the blow room department of the textile mill. Here the fibres are subsequently treated by opening and cleaning rollers in order to make the fibres as dust free. For this purpose, coarse opener machines are being used to remove heavy impurity particles and fine opener machine are being used to remove light impurity particles. It has also been observed that, the requirement for cleaning coarser and fine particles needs separate machines for performing the cleaning action. Even using coarse and fine opener in a single machine is also known. In this, the fibres are being treated by both coarse cleaning roller as well as fine cleaning roller and then delivered as fine tuft as output. Here there is disadvantage that we cannot get coarse opened tuft output alone by neglecting the fine tuft delivery in those kind of machines. Since the usage of coarse opener and fine opener requires more floor space and ducting arrangements, the present invention is posed to overcome those disadvantages.

OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION

It is an object of the invention to provide an improved opening and cleaning apparatus performing bypass delivery for coarse and fine opened fibre tuft separately.

Another object of the invention to provide an improved opening and cleaning apparatus requires less floor space and minimal ducting yet another object of the invention to provide an improved opening and cleaning apparatus capable of deliver higher throughput.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

According to the present invention, the improved opening and cleaning apparatus comprises one coarse opener and one fine opener in a single machine unit, hereafter called as universal opener. Said coarse opener is provided with coarse opening roller and the later is provided with fine opening roller. Coarse opener removes the heavy/coarse impurities from cotton fibre tufts and delivers coarse tufts. Whereas the fine opener removes the light/fine impurities from cotton and delivers fine tufts. If the input material contains more impurities and requires more cleaning action, it will undergo both coarse and fine opening treatments by the corresponding opening rollers. On the other hand, if the input material contains less impurities and requires less cleaning action, it will undergo only coarse opening treatment by the coarse opening roller and by-passed to next process. The by-passing action of selectively allowing the fibre tufts either to the coarse opening or to the combination of both coarse and fine opening is achieved by suitable regulating means such as valves/flaps provided inside the universal opener. As both openers are in single machine unit, this universal opener requires less floor space than existing setup and avoids ducting between separate coarse and fine openers.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING

Figure -1 schematically illustrates the constructional features of the universal opener according to the invention.

Figure - 2 illustrates the actuating and regulating mechanism of the present invention.

Figure-3 schematically illustrates the coarse opening operation flow of universal opener according to the invention.

Figure - 4 schematically illustrates the combined coarse and fine opening operation flow of universal opener according to the invention.

Figure-5 shows the another embodiment of the universal opener for coarse opening according to the invention.

Figure - 6 shows the embodiment of the universal opener for combined coarse and fine opening according to Fig-5 of the invention.

Figure - 7 illustrates the yet another embodiment of the universal opener for coarse opening according to the invention.

Figure - 8 illustrates the embodiment of the universal opener for combined coarse and fine opening according to Fig-7 of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The improved opening and cleaning apparatus according to this invention can process both natural and man-made fibres depending upon their impurity composition percentage. That is, it can be selectively used for those kind of fibres according to the required cleaning stages. Figure-1 & Figure-2 of the drawings represents the constructional features of the universal opener (1) according to the present invention. This universal opener (1) comprises fibre feeding duct (3) & feed rollers (4) in order to feed the fibres into the first opening roller (5). The first opening roller (5) and second opening roller (6) are hereafter referred as coarse opening roller (5) and fine opening roller (6) respectively. There also provided grid bar arrangement (7) below these opening rollers (5,6) in order to dissipate the impurities into the waste collection chamber (11).

A regulating means (8c) for eg., regulating flap is pivoted at point (19b) and is provided between the said opening rollers (5,6) for selectively allow the fibre tuft flow. Said regulating flap (8c) and one more regulating flap (8b) are movably connected at a point (8a) and are actuated by an actuating means (10) such as hydraulic piston/pneumatic piston/electric drive/mechanical linkages etc.,(shown in Figure-2). This regulating arrangement further comprises a regulating flap (19d) of which one end is pivoted at point (19a) and is connected with regulating flap (8c) at point (19a). And one regulating valve (9a) is provided in the starting point of delivery chute (12) for regulating the conveyance of coarse cleaned tuft. Another regulating valve (9b) is provided in the starting point of next delivery chute (13) for regulating the conveyance of fine cleaned tuft. Both delivery chutes (12 &13) are combined together at the by-pass (14) and formed as a single chute or common conveyance path (18) to further supply the delivered material. Here one more regulating valve (9c) is provided to change over the corresponding ducts (12 or 13) into the delivery conveyance path (18).

Figure-1, Figure-2 & Figure-3 of the drawings shows the functional details for coarse cleaning of the universal opener according to the present invention. Here the fibre tuft (2) coming into the universal opener (1) is treated only by the coarse opening roller (5) for coarse cleaning. At this stage, the regulating flaps (8c, 8b) are closing the path of opening roller (6) for preventing the fibre tuft (2) to come into the said fine opening roller (6). Said regulating flaps (8b, 8c) are pivoted at their corresponding points (19b, 19c) for closing and opening purpose depending upon the requirement. Moreover the regulating flaps (8b, 8c) are connected together through pivot point (8a) and are collectively actuated by the actuating means (10) while closing and opening positions. Now the regulating valve (9a) is in opening position so as to allow the coarse cleaned fibre tuft (16) to pass through delivery chute (12). Since there is no fine cleaning operation, the delivery chute (13) is being closed by the regulating valve (9b) at the entry and the regulating valve (9c) at the by-pass (14). Hence the coarse cleaned fibre tuft (16) is passed through the common conveyance path (18) for the next subsequent operation. The impurities (15) trashed out from the cotton is falls through the grid bar arrangement (7) and is collected in waste collection chamber (11) for further disposal.

The fibres which requires fine cleaning operation, needs to be treated with more cleaning points, ie., it has to be opened and cleaned more by opening rollers which results more cleaning. Said fine cleaning operation as illustrated in Figure-2 & Figure-4 of the drawings, wherein the fibre tuft (2) is being treated by the coarse opening roller (5) as well as fine opening roller (6). The fibre tuft (2) coming into the universal opener (1) is treated first by the coarse opening roller (5) for coarse cleaning and then by fine opening roller (6) for fine cleaning. The regulating flaps (8b, 8c) are opened path of opening roller (6) for allowing the fibre tuft (2) to come into the said fine opening roller (6). Meanwhile the regulating valve (9a) is in closing position and the regulating valves (9b, 9c) are opened so as to allow the fine tuft (17) flows through delivery chute (13). Since there is a requirement for double cleaning operation, the delivery chute (12) is being closed by the regulating valve (9c) at the by-pass (14). Hence the fine cleaned fibre tuft (17) is passed through the delivery chute (13) and by-pass (14) then entered into the common conveyance path (18) for the next subsequent operation.

Another embodiment of the present invention is shown with Figure-5 & Figure-6 wherein the coarse opening roller (5) and fine opening roller (6) are placed slantingly. In this embodiment, a regulating flap (18a) pivoted at a point (19b) is provided between said opening rollers (5,6) of the universal opener. When the regulating flap (18a) is in opening position as shown in figure-5, the tuft (2) is being processed only by coarse opening roller (5) and is delivered to next process. Whereas the tuft (2) is being treated by both coarse opening roller (5) & fine opening roller (6) when the regulating flap (18a) is in closed position as shown in figure-6.

Figure-7 & Figure-8 illustrates one more embodiment of the universal opener (1) according to the present invention. Here the coarse opening roller (5) and fine opening roller (6) are positioned slantingly. And also a plurality of feed rollers (20) and a regulating flap (18a) is provided between the coarse opening roller (5) and fine opening roller (6). When the regulating flap (18a) is in opening position as shown in figure-7, the tuft (2) is being processed only by coarse opening roller (5) and is delivered to next process. The tuft (2) is being treated by both coarse opening roller (5) & fine opening roller (6) when the regulating flap (18a) is in closed position as shown in figure-8. The feed rollers (20) are being used for effective feeding of coarse tufts into the fine cleaner when there is a requirement for fine opening.

In all aforesaid embodiments, regulating means such as regulating valves (9a, 9b, 9c) and regulating flaps (8b, 8c, 18a, 19d) are provided at specific locations of the passage so as to selectively allowing the fibre tufts (2) for processing. The regulating valves (9a, 9b, 9c) and regulating flaps (8b, 8c, 18a,19d) are being operated according to the requirement of material flow, either to the coarse opening or to the combination of both coarse opening and fine opening. Generally the coarse opening or both coarse and fine opening of a fibre tufts (2) is being decided based on the fibre properties and quality requirement. Said regulating valves (9a, 9b, 9c ) and regulating flaps (8b, 8c, 18a, 19d) are operated by suitable actuating means such as hydraulic piston/pneumatic piston/electric drive/mechanical linkages etc. The position / operation of the regulating valves and regulating flaps is controlled by control system. Since the present invention uses both openers are in single machine unit, it requires less floor space than existing setup and avoids ducting between separate coarse and fine openers. And also reduces the power consumptions for roller drives with the improved and effective suction arrangements. And also the embodiments shown herein are only exemplary. Further embodiments are possible within the scope of the invention.

WE CLAIM

1. An improved opening and cleaning apparatus of a textile machine having coarse opening unit and a finer opening unit comprising coarse opening roller (5) and fine opening roller (6), wherein means are provided for selectively allowing the fibre tufts (2) either to the coarse opening or to the combination of both coarse and fine opening.

2. An improved opening and cleaning apparatus of a textile machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein the means comprising regulating valves (9a, 9b, 9c) and regulating flaps (8b, 8c, 18a, 19d).

3. An improved opening and cleaning apparatus of a textile machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein the regulating valves (9a, 9b, 9c ) and the regulating flaps (8b, 8c, 18a, 19d) are provided with actuating means such as hydraulic piston / pneumatic piston / electric drive / mechanical linkages, etc.,

4. An improved opening and cleaning apparatus of a textile machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein the coarse opener is provided with coarse opening roller (5) which removes the heavy / coarse impurities from fibre tufts (2).

5. An improved opening and cleaning apparatus of a textile machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein the delivery chute (12) is in use while coarse opening.

6. An improved opening and cleaning apparatus of a textile machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein the fine opener is provided with fine opening roller (6) which removes the light / fine impurities from fibre tufts (2).

7. An improved opening and cleaning apparatus of a textile machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein the delivery chute (13) is in use while combined coarse and fine opening.

8. An improved opening and cleaning apparatus of a textile machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein the cleaned tufts pass through by pass (14).

9. An improved opening and cleaning apparatus of a textile machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein the conveyance path (18) is connected with by pass (14).