DESC:TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to the spinning preparatory machine. More particularly, the invention relates to a textile carding machine having a revolving flat bar arrangement.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Textile spinning preparatory machine like carding machine includes the objective of separate the flocks into individual fibres. Additionally carding result in parallelisation, cleaning, reduction of neps, aligning, blending and elimination of some short fibres and sliver formation.

The primary objective of a carding machine is to separate the individual fibres from fibre flock which is performed between the main cylinder and flats. Intensity of separation depends on spacing of the main cylinder from the flats, sharpness of the clothing, number of working flats with respect to the main cylinder, the tooth density of the clothing, and clothing life. Also, it is observed that separation of individual fibres influenced by flat shape, size, height, width and stability of flat.

The flat surface is created by large number of individual carding strips secured to the bars and arranged in succession. The bars of the flats made of aluminium and are somewhat longer than the operating width of the carding cylinder and slide on the guide surfaces. The bars are given a ribbed form (T-Shape) in order to prevent longitudinal bending. A clothing strip of the same width is stretched over the each bar and secured by clamping. During the beginning of the production of a card web, the card undergoes a warm-up period. The duration of the warming-up period and the generated warming-up level is influenced by the main cylinder speed, by the production rate and by the selected settings of the elements to each other. At lower and at higher production rate, the warming up time is more or less the same; the generated heat is, however, higher at a high production rate. During this warming-up period the various components expand due to the warming up. With a high performance card operation is at a high production rate, which leads to an additional temperature increase. This heat gradient causes a bending of the elements across the width of the card. Due to this deflection a closer carding gap results at the center than at the outer zone. Thereby an uneven carding gap results, which becomes wider in outward direction. This leads to a reduced carding quality and/or insufficient dirt separation and/or insufficient nep dissolving.

To prevent the aforesaid disadvantage, various attempts had been carried out and one of such known type of solution in carding machine disclosed in EP1687467(A1) wherein a concave surface is created by machining the flat bar. The machining such as grinding or milling is done over the length of the flat bar in such a way that a concave surface is produced. That means, amount of base material is removed in gradual depth from both ends and reaches higher removal at the center of the flat bar. Since the materials are removed to create concave shape, such flat bars have insufficient strength, become weak while processing at higher speed in high performance cards. Other disadvantage of said revolving flats are, the thermal deflection at middle portion is high and produces localized dense population of nearby clothing points till completion of warm-up process. This gives an insufficient individualization and damages to the fibre during said warming-up period. Also it is very difficult to provide closer carding gap settings because a continuous change in setting arises from starting to end of warm-up period.

Moreover the known arrangement has flat bars with less stability because of its geometrical nature. When going for high production cards, the flats working time against the main cylinder and with the fibre material also increased which therefore increases the contact (pulling) force and hence more heat generation occurs. For such high working temperature, more stable flats are mandatory.

Conventional carding machines have high strength material for flats, but lead to increase the weight and manufacturing difficulties. Other limitations in the known technique, shape of flat can be changed but cannot change the path or loop length of revolving flat chain. Attempts has been made for increasing the width of flat bar up to a marginal level to increase the strength of the flat bar. However changing the width of flat bar, leads to reduction in number of working flats, which resulted in difficulty in move their own path or loop length. Moreover, the percentage of strength improvement became less when increasing width of flat.

There has thus been a need to develop a new revolving flat arrangement for the high production carding machine that would overcome the disadvantages present in the existing machines.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The following disclosure presents a simplified summary of the invention in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the invention. This summary is not an extensive overview of the present invention. It is not intended to identify the key/critical elements of the invention or to delineate the scope of the invention. Its sole purpose is to present some concept of the invention in a simplified form as a prelude to a more detailed description of the invention presented later.

An object of the present invention is to overcome the problems of the prior art.

The main object of the present invention is to provide a revolving flat arrangement of the carding machine for better output sliver quality level for longer clothing period.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a revolving flat arrangement with higher strength and working stability for higher production.

Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a carding machine having a revolving flat arrangement with higher thermal stability and improved life span.

According to the present invention the carding machine comprises a carding main cylinder and at least one revolving flat arrangement on a circumferential surface thereof; a licker-in roller adapted to transfer the fed fibers to the carding main cylinder; a doffer roller adapted to carry the carded fiber from the carding main cylinder; plurality of flat bars connected sequentially to the revolving flat arrangement forming a closed- loop structure disposed adjacent to the carding main cylinder; said flat bars have a substantially T-shaped cross-section comprising an extruded body as top portion; wherein the height(H) of the said top portion is ranging in between 85mm to 120mm; andthe total number of flat bars in said closed-loop structure ranges between100 to 150.

In one implementation, the present invention provides a revolving flat arrangement (5) of a carding machine (1) which comprises a carding main cylinder (2) and at least a revolving flat arrangement (5) on a circumference thereof; a licker-in roller (3) adapted to transfer the fed fibers to the carding main cylinder (2);a doffer roller (4)adapted to carry the cardedfibers further from the carding main cylinder (2);plurality of flat bars (6) connected sequentially to the revolving flat arrangement (5) forming a closed- loop structure disposed adjacent to the carding main cylinder (2).

In one implementation, the present invention discloses the flat bars having a T-shaped hollow cross-section with an additional horizontal rib adapted to provide more rigidity and the flat bars (6) with height ranging in between 85 mm to 120 mm and comprises an extruded body (7) as top portion and a metallic clothing (8) with plurality of sharp tooth arranged as bottom portion.

In one implementation of the present invention, at least 25 flat bars (6) forming the working flats are adapted to make contact to the carding main cylinder (2) to form a carding area.

In one implementation of the present invention, the direction of rotation of flat bar arrangement (5) is sameor opposite to the rotating direction of the carding main cylinder (2).

Other aspects, advantages, and salient features of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description, which, taken in conjunction with the annexed drawings, discloses exemplary embodiments of the invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS
The above and other aspects, features and advantages of the embodiments of the present disclosure will be more apparent in the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:

Figure 1 shows the schematic illustration of the carding machine with revolving flat arrangement, according to one of the embodiments of the present invention.

Figure 2 shows the schematic illustration of the flat bar of the textile carding machine, according to one of the embodiments of the present invention.

Persons skilled in the art will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and may not have been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figure may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure. Throughout the drawings, it should be noted that like reference numbers are used to depict the same or similar elements, features, and structures.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PRESENT INVENTION
The following description with reference to the accompanying drawings is provided to assist in a comprehensive understanding of various embodiments of the present disclosure as defined by the claims and their equivalents. It includes various specific details to assist in that understanding, but these are to be regarded as merely exemplary. Accordingly, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that various changes and modifications of the various embodiments described herein can be made without departing from the scope and spirit of the present disclosure. In addition, descriptions of well-known functions and constructions may be omitted for clarity and conciseness.

The terms and words used in the following description and claims are not limited to the bibliographical meanings, but, are merely used by the inventor to enable a clear and consistent understanding of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be apparent to those skilled in the art that the following description of various embodiments of the present disclosure is provided for illustration purposes only and not for the purpose to limit the present disclosure as defined by the appended claims and their equivalents.

It is to be understood that the singular forms "a," "an," and "the" include plural referents unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. Thus, for example, a reference to "a component surface" includes a reference to one or more of such surfaces.

All terms (including technical and scientific terms) used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which various embodiments belong. Further, the meaning of terms or words used in the specification and the claims should not be limited to the literal or commonly employed sense but should be construed in accordance with the spirit of the disclosure to most properly describe the present disclosure.

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular various embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of various embodiments. As used herein, the singular forms "a," "an" and "the" are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms "comprises" and/or "comprising" used herein specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, members, components, and/or groups thereof, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, members, components, and/or groups thereof. Also, Expressions such as "at least one of," when preceding a list of elements, modify the entire list of elements and do not modify the individual elements of the list.

In an embodiment the present invention provides a revolving flat arrangement with higher thermal stability and improved life span. According to the present invention the carding machine comprises a revolving flat arrangement (5) where the plurality of flat bars (6) sequentially connected to form a loop structure arrangement which is disposed adjacent to the carding main cylinder (2). Further, it discloses the flat bars (6) having a substantially T-shaped hollow cross-section with an additional horizontal rib adapted to provide more rigidity to the flat bars (6) and the flat bars (6) with height ranging in between 85mm to 120mm and comprising an extruded body (7) as top portion and a metallic clothing (8) with plurality of sharp tooth arranged as bottom portion. Said extruded body (7) is selected from aluminium and/or alloys of aluminium and/or cast iron and/or carbon steel and/orpolymer.Since height of the top portion of extruded body (7) ranges in between 85mm to 120 mm, it provides more strength to flat bar (6) because of sturdy metallic body (7) and therefore the middle deflection along the flat bar (6) is eliminated to great extent. Hence the gap between cylinder element (2) and flat (5) element remain same throughout the width irrespective of process and production.

The present disclosure will now be described more fully with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which various embodiments of the present disclosure are shown. The present disclosure may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as being limited to the various embodiments set forth herein, rather, these various embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete, and will fully convey the present disclosure. Furthermore, a detailed description of other parts will not be provided not to make the present disclosure unclear. Like reference numerals in the drawings refer to like elements throughout.

Figure-1 of the accompanying drawings illustrates the carding machine (1) according to the present invention comprising a licker-in roller (3), main cylinder (2), doffer roller (4) and revolving flats arrangement (5). Said revolving flats arrangement comprises plurality of flat bars (6) connected thereto forming a closed loop structure, and disposed adjacent to the carding main cylinder (2) having 800mm to 1300mm diameter forming a carding area. The working width or width of all main elements such as licker-in roller, main cylinder, revolving flats, stationary flats and doffer roller ranges from 900mm to 1500mmand more. The direction of rotation of flat bar arrangement (5) is same or opposite to the rotating direction of the main cylinder (2). Here at least 25 flat bars of plurality of flats forming the working flats make contact to the carding main cylinder (2) to form a carding area.

Each flat bar (6) of revolving flats arrangement (5), are made of aluminium / cast iron and have a T-shaped hollow cross-section as shown in Figure-2 of the drawings. Since the cross-section of said flat bar is hollow, an additional horizontal rib is included to provide more rigidity. Said flat bars (6) comprise an extruded body (7) as top portion and a metallic clothing (8) with plurality of sharp tooth arranged as bottom portion. The height (H) of extruded body (7) is provided with the range of 85 mm to 120 mm to improve the dimensional stability during thermal expansion. These thermal changes occur in the flat bar while warm-up period as well as normal running condition of the carding machine. Since there is no removal of base material as described in prior art issue, the added height provides more strength to flat bar (6) because of sturdy body (7) and therefore the middle deflection along the flat bar is eliminated to great extent. Hence the gap between cylinder element and flat element remain same throughout the width irrespective of process & production resultant. And therefore cylinder elements and flat bars do not touch one another at elevated temperature and thus damaging of said elements not occurs during running condition.

In one implementation, the present invention provides a revolving flat arrangement (5) of a carding machine (1) which comprises a carding main cylinder (2) and at least a revolving flat arrangement (5) on a circumference thereof; a licker-in roller (3) adapted to transfer the fed fibers to the carding main cylinder (2); a doffer roller (4)adapted to carry the carded fiber from the carding main cylinder (2); plurality of flat bars (6) connected sequentially to the revolving flat arrangement (5) forming a closed- loop structure disposed adjacent to the carding main cylinder (2).

In one implementation, the present invention discloses the flat bars having a T-shaped hollow cross-section with an additional horizontal rib adapted to provide more rigidity and the flat bars (6) with height ranging in between 85mm to 120mm and comprises an extruded body (7) as top portion and a metallic clothing (8) with plurality of sharp tooth provided as the bottom portion of said flat bars (6).

In one implementation of the present invention, at least 25 flat bars (6), preferably36 or more flat bars forming the working flats are adapted to make contact to the carding main cylinder (2) to form a carding area.

In one implementation of the present invention, the direction of rotation of flat bar arrangement (5) is same or opposite to the rotating direction of the carding main cylinder (2).

According to a further aspect of the present invention, the total number of flat bars (6) in the closed- loop structure of the revolving flats arrangement (5) is maintained as 100 to 150. This will provide more loop length or path (L) to avoid collision of flat bar heads at the entry circle and exit circle of the carding area. Moreover, the increased number of flat bars provides more heat dissipation due to more idle time of remaining flat bars that are not present in the carding area. Thus the invention results an increased clothing life span to flat bars due to its less repeated cycle time of contact with cylinder at carding (working) area. Because of the less repeated cycle time, the working load is distributed evenly to all flat bars. Since there has been longer clothing period between grinding cycle, the carding machine produces better output sliver quality level.

Moreover, there is no need to go for high strength material for getting higher rigidity and higher thermal dimensional stability behaviour and also the same width of flat bar as in existing flats size can be used without any deteriorate in strength. This can be manufactured easily and with high precision at low weight because of no change in existing base material.

Yet another advantage of the invention is above 25, preferably 32 to 36number of working flats can be used with closer setting and there is no special requirement on accessories. Further, an advantage of the rigid structure according to the invention helps in consistency with respect to extrusion as well as in the machining process. It is noted that the accuracy level for the 1000-1500mm working width carding machine flat bar is less than 5 microns which is more advantageous to get accuracy with respect to settings within & between flat bar during re-clothing and also at customer end. Thus a closer setting of revolving flat and carding cylinder also possible which does not require any special requirement on accessories and tools.

In view of the present disclosure which describes the present invention, all changes, modifications and variations within the meaning and range of equivalency are considered within the scope and spirit of the invention. It is to be understood that the aspects and embodiment of the disclosure described above may be used in any combination with each other. Several of the aspects and embodiment may be combined together to form a further embodiment of the disclosure.
,CLAIMS:1. A carding machine (1) comprising:
a carding main cylinder (2) and at least one revolving flat arrangement (5) on a circumferential surface thereof;
a licker-in roller (3) adapted to transfer the fed fibers to the carding main cylinder (2);
a doffer roller (4) adapted to carry the carded fiber from the carding main cylinder (2);
plurality of flat bars (6) connected sequentially to the revolving flat arrangement (5) forming a closed- loop structure disposed adjacent to the carding main cylinder (2);
said flat bars (6) have a substantially T-shaped cross-section comprising an extruded body (7) as top portion;
wherein the height(H)of the said top portion is ranging in between 85mm to 120mm; and
the total number of flat bars (6) in said closed-loop structure ranges between100 to 150.

2. The machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein the diameter of the carding main cylinder (2) ranges from 800mm to1300mm.

3. The machine as claimed in claim 1, comprising at least 25 flat bars (6), preferably 36 flat bars (6) forming the working flats are adapted to make contact to the carding main cylinder (2) to form a carding area.

4. The machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein the direction of rotation of flat bar arrangement (5) is same oropposite to the rotating direction of the carding main cylinder (2).

5. The machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein the flat bars (5) are selectively made of aluminium / cast iron/alloys of aluminium /steel/ polymer

6. The machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein a metallic clothing (8) with plurality of sharp tooth isprovided atthe bottom portionof flat bars (6).