Flow Chart of Worsted Yarn Process

There are two types of wool yarn. They are woolen yarn and worsted yarn. For manufacturing of worsted yarn, combing is done. Worsted yarns are wonderful for knitters and crocheters of all skill levels. Worsted yarn is ideal for garments. It is wildly popular and ever versatile. Flow Chart of Worsted Yarn Process is as follows:

Process Flow Chart of Worsted Yarn

Worsted Yarn Manufacturing Process:

1. Sheep Shearing: Sheep shearing is the process by which the woolen fleece of a sheep is cut off. Cut-off wool is called fleece. It is also called “grease wool” because of all the oil and lanolin in the wool.
2. Sorting: Sheared wool is sorted according to different colors, quality, texture, type and they are sorted into different grades according to these parameters.
3. Scouring: Wool taken directly from the sheep is called “raw” or “grease wool”. It contains sand, dirt, grease and dried sweat (called suint). The weight of contaminants accounts for about 30 to 70 percent of the fleece’s total weight. To remove these contaminants, the wool is scoured in a series of alkaline baths containing water, soap and soda ash or a similar alkali. Rollers in the scouring machines squeeze excess water from the fleece, but fleece is not allowed to dry completely.
4. Worsted Carding: Carding is the only process that can untangle and individualize the fibers. After scouring and drying, the vegetable matters still remain in the wool. The bulk of these foreign matters are removed in carding. Carding also achieves intimate mixing of wool fibers, which is only possible with individualized fibers.
5. Preparative Gilling: The preparative gilling is mainly to align the fibers in a parallel direction, further blend the wool through doubling, and to add moisture and lubricants. This is done by using a coarser comb. The main objectives of the gilling machine are to further align the fibers in card sliver and to blend the slivers from different cards. A gilling machine is also known as a gill box, or simply a gill.
6. Worsted Combing: Combing is a critical step in worsted processing. The combing process removes short fibers, neps, and impurities (collectively known as noils), further mixes and aligning fibers, and forms a continuous rope-like comb sliver.
7. Finisher Gilling: Finisher gilling is mainly aimed to remove the mild entanglement introduced to the combed sliver.
8. Drawing: Drawing is an advanced operation that doubles and redoubles slivers of wool fibers. The process draws, drafts, twists, and winds the stock, making the slivers more compact and thinning them into slobbers. Drawing is done only for the worsted process.
9. Roving: Slivers obtained from the draw frame are subjected to a roving frame to produce rovings. In this process, slivers are drawn out by roving frame, and a slight twist is also inserted to form lengths suitable for spinning. Roving can be efficiently spun into yarn on a spinning frame.
10. Spinning: Roving is then spun into yarn by giving more twist to yarn.