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Introduction and melt spinning line

What is a fibre?

A fibre or a filament (a continuous form of fibre) is the fundamental unit of textile materials. It has high strength (tensile, bending,
torsional, or compression), high flexibility (i.e. low moduli), extensibility, and shows recoverability on deformation. Most of these
properties are observed about one principal direction, which is known as the axis of the fibre. Since all textile structures -one to three
dimensional (yarn, fabric, or braids etc.), are built using this basic structural unit, these structures also possess such unique
properties.

In order to possess such properties, the fibre or filament has a unique micro structure (morphology) in which majority of the polymer
chains are oriented in the direction of the axis of the fibre. The more oriented the polymer molecules are in this direction, the better
properties the resulting fibre/filament is considered to have.

How are fibres made?

Nature has its own ways of arranging these polymer chains in unidirectional orientation to make natural fibres such as cotton, jute
and wool, etc. This process possibly involves constructing the natural polymers, such as cellulose and proteins, bond by bond while it
is being simultaneously organized in an oriented form. Spiders and silk worm also have a unique methodology of spinning, where the
hydrophilic parts of different polymer chains are forced to come together in an oriented form inside the duct of the insect. As this
material is extruded, stretched and dried outside the insect’s body, it converts into a stable, water insoluble highly oriented structure.
However, at present, we are unable to adopt such methodologies for producing man-made fibres/filaments. For producing man-made
fibres, the polymers (either natural or synthetic) must be unfolded and extended uni-directionally to extremely large dimension to get
high aspect (length to diameter) ratio and high orientation. This is known as spinning.

In spinning, a small amount of polymer (say ~1 g) may be elongated to over 9000 km of length while the other dimension (diameter)
is only in microns. This requires a precise control over the spinning process to enable such unidirectional extensions in melt form. In
fibre formation, all efforts are directed in controlling the microstructure of the polymer so that properties as mentioned above are
obtained with respect to the principal axis of the fibre. This is unlike other methods of polymer processing such as injection molding,
compression molding, extrusion and blowing etc., where mostly isotropic properties are desired and only a little attention is directed
in making a controlled microstructure in terms of molecular orientation and their spatial arrangement. The engineering complexity of
the spinning operation is evident from the fact that, in modern spinning plants, large amount of polymer is expected to be
continuously converted (spun) into filaments without any breaks.

FIBER SPINNING CONCEPT

What is involved in the process of spinning?

In a typical spinning process, polymer melt or solution is extruded from a fine hole and is elongated by applying a tensile external
force on the extruded portion. As the polymer melt or solution is pulled, it is cooled or precipitated, respectively, to form a solid
filament. This filament is then usually subjected to post spinning operations such as drawing, which is unidirectional stretching in a
semi solid form, and heat-setting, which is crystallization to equilibrium. Other post spinning processes such as texturing is simply a
variation of the drawing and heat-setting processes to impart curvilinear shape to an otherwise straight filament. This gives physical
bulk to the filaments. The process of fibre formation is complete only when both spinning and post spinning operations are carried
out. In this module, an attempt has been made to present the fundamental principles involved in fibre formation.

What is melt spinning?

Melt spinning is a process for producing filaments. However, only those polymers that can be melted without undergoing thermal
degradation can be spun into fibres/filaments using this process. Some of the typical examples are nylon-6, nylon 66, poly(ethylene
terephthalate) and poly(propylene). Though, melting is the essential criteria for carrying out melt spinning, it is not the sufficient

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condition. There are other requirements that a polymer should meet before it can be regarded as spinnable. These are discussed in
detail later in this section.

What are the various components of a melt spinning line?

A typical melt spinning setup consists of a melting device-normally an extruder, a manifold- distribution arrangement for the melt, a
metering pump- device to regulate polymer flow rate, a spin-pack- arrangement to filter and extrude the polymer through fine holes, a
quench duct- cooling zone for the extruded polymer filament to turn solid, and a winder- a device to pull and wind the solidified
filament. This arrangement is shown schematically in Figure 2.1 . The entire line from extruder output to the spin pack are
maintained at a constant temperature, which is called the spinning temperature.

Figure 2.1: Schematic diagram of melt spinning machine

Each of these components in the spinning process has a critical function to perform, which will become clear as the discussion
continues. The polymer is taken in chip form, which is a cylindrical form having dimensions in the range of 1-3 mm. A polymer chip is
first subjected to an extruder.

1.What is an extruder and what does it do?

In earlier days, the polymer chips were melted using heating grids, however, now, extruders have completely replaced other melting
arrangements. Even when polymer is fed to spinning section in melted form directly from a continuous polymerization line, the
extruder is often used as the first device in the spinning line. This is because an extruder performs multiple functions. Apart from
melting solid polymer chips, an extruder homogenizes the melt by mixing it at various stages. Homogenization is an important aspect
in order to ensure continuous spinning without any breaks or non-uniformity in the spun yarns.

Extruder compresses the polymer fluid to remove any trapped gasses including air/nitrogen that is drawn along with the chips as they
enter the extruder. It also helps in metering the flow rate in the spinning line. It is the first control of flow rate. Finally it acts as a
polymer fluid pump and provides the necessary pressure that is required by the polymer to flow from the extruder to the metering

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pump.

What is the design of the extruder?

In order for the extruder to carry out all these functions effectively, extruder design is very critical. Figure 2.2 shows the schematic
diagram of a typical extruder. It has a cooled feeding zone- where the chips enter the extruder, a melting zone- where chips melt with
the heat supplied by the heaters and the heat generated by the dissipation of the polymeric viscous forces, a compression zone-
where the material is compressed into a smaller volume to push out trapped gasses. This is followed by a metering zone, which is
the narrowest part of the extruder channels. Because of its constricted size, only a limited amount of polymer melt may be dragged
through this zone depending upon the screw rpm. Since the metering zone does not allow the entire material coming to the
compression zone to pass through, the excess polymer is pushed back resulting in continuous mixing. At the end of the metering
zone is the head of the extruder screw, which may have spikes (optional feature) for further mixing/homogenization.

Figure 2.2 Schematic diagram of extruder

The design of extruder and its screw may vary considerably depending upon the material being processed and the principal functions
required for processing that material. The readers may refer to other literature for details about the various extruder design and their
functions.

The design of the screw, which includes the length to diameter ratio (aspect ratio of 1:25 or 1:40), angle of the flanges, etc. is kept in
accordance to the specific heat capacity and rheological behaviour of the polymer it is meant to process. Higher the amount of heat
required to be transferred to the polymer, longer is the residence time. For example for PP, since the heat capacity of the polymer is
large and the molecular weight is often high, it needs longer residence time in an extruder to attain lower melt viscosity. A
considerable amount of heat has to be transferred to the polymer to melt it and bring it to the temperature of spinning. Similarly, if a
polymer is to be blended with an additive, the extruder design should allow effective mixing and homogenization, which is again the
function of the residence time and the shear rate.

The design of the screw also has significant effect on the heat generated during shear melting of the polymer, and the energy needed
for melting the polymer chips is provided by both the heaters and the mechanical action of the screw.

2. What is a manifold?

Polymer flows from the extruder to the metering pump and spin packs through a manifold, which is a simple network of cylindrical
pipes as shown in Figure 2.1 . Each pipe is connected to one metering pump. The manifold is designed in such a way, that polymer
takes the same amount of time from the extruder outlet to any of the metering pump whether it is located near or far away from the
extruder. This allows the polymers to have same thermal history, hence the same rheological properties, at all positions of the
spinning. The same residence time is achieved by keeping the length and bends of each pipe same. Also, the pressure drop across
each pipe is kept same so that the polymer gets divided equally. When the distribution lines are long, at times, static mixers are also

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installed inside distribution pipes. These allow shear mixing of polymer melt within a pipe to keep it homogenized.

3.What is a static mixer?

A static mixer is a network of channels interconnected with each other like a honey comb web, which takes the polymeric fluid from
the periphery to the centre and that from the centre to the periphery. Also, in this process it induces shear mixing among the various
fluid elements.

Such mixing becomes necessary because in a pipe flow, fluid travels in a parabolic velocity profile, which means the fluid velocity is
maximum at the center and is much lower near the pipe walls. This nonuniform flow profile across the cross-section of the pipe
develops due to the stresses exerted on the fluid by the stationary walls. The shear fluid flow has been explained later in this module.

4.What is a metering pump?

Metering pump has a very important function in spinning as it regulates the through put of the polymer from the spinneret.
Throughput rate and the winding speed (i.e. take-up speed) together decide the denier of the spun filament. A metering pump must
deliver constant throughput irrespective of the back pressure felt by it from the choking filters in a spin pack. Therefore, only the
positive displacement pumps are used for metering polymer melt in spinning.

Typical design of a gear type metering pump is shown in Figure 2.3. The pump has two gears whose teeth are intermeshed with
each other at the center. The gear pair sits in a cavity made into a metal plate and with tip of the teeth in very close clearance from
the wall of the cavity. The polymer enters from the one side of the intermeshed zone and fills the empty spaces between the two
teeth of each gear as they emerge out from the intermesh. This fluid is then taken around the gears by their teeth as shown in the
figure. When the polymer reaches the other side of the intermesh, it is forced out of the spaces between the teeth as the teeth enter
the intermesh zone. The emptied out or pushed out fluid then exits from the other side of the intermesh to the spin pack. The quantity
of the fluid passing through the metering pump is given by the number of teeth getting filled and emptied in a unit time.

Figure 2.3 Schematic diagram of metering pump

Mass flow rate = volume between teeth x no. of teeth in a gear x 2x rpm x density of melt

The volume of gear pump and its efficiency of pumping may be estimated as per the description given in the literature.

5.What is a spin pack?

Spin pack is the heart of the spinning system ( Figure 2.4 ). It has a reservoir of polymeric fluid-that dampens the pulsating effect of
the gear metering pump, a filter pack- that removes the solid particles from the melt. These may be polymer gels, agglomerated
additives, contamination, etc. Normally a filter is a set of filters containing 3-5 individual filter meshes, where the first filter is a coarser

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filter followed by the finer ones. The lowest filter is the finest of all which makes sure that no particle other than those desired (such
as well dispersed micron sized particles of an additive such as TiO2, a delustering agent often used in fibres) is pushed through the
spinneret hole. Improper filtration will clog the spinneret hole leading to a lower throughput and a lower denier of that filament, and
eventually, result in a break of the spinning filament.

Figure 2.4 Schematic diagram of spin pack assembly

It is often believed that if a particle in polymer melt is bigger than 1/10 th of the diameter of the final filament, it will result in a
catastrophic break in the filament during spinning or post spinning operations. Not only should the particles of the additives be
smaller in size, they should not agglomerate to form bigger particles. Addition of additives in polymer melt is a challenging
proposition and all care must be taken to properly disperse the additive particles.

If the polymer is being recycled, often a large amount of dust particles and gel particles are present in the melt. In such spinning
lines, polymer is either filtered using a centralized filtration unit (CFU) located just after the extruder or placing additional filtration
medium such as sand inside the spin pack cavity (melt reservoir) before the filter pack.

Once the polymer is filtered, it reaches a distributor. Function of the distributor, as the name suggests is to ensure proper supply of
the polymer melt to all spinneret holes. Also, it makes sure that there is no dead volume and all the polymer coming to the spin pack
is being utilized in spinning.

6.The spinneret- an important component

The last but also the most important of all components in the spin-pack is a spinneret plate. It is simply a thick metal plate with fine
holes drilled through them as shown in Figure 2.4. The hole has larger diameter towards the inside surface with conical entry. This
allows entry of the polymer melt with less pressure drop. The conical entrance facilitates alignment of the molecules to some extent
to enable them to enter without much force. However, the most important dimension in the spinneret is the length and diameter of the
final cylindrical spinneret (hole). Polymer passes through it in a shear flow and comes out on the other end as an extruded strand.
Spinneret plates for monofilaments have single spinneret hole with diameter of about 0.5-1 mm, while those for multifilament have
several holes with diameters in a range of 0.5-0.05 mm. In case of monofilament spinning, spinneret plate with one hole, spins a
single filament which is wound on a bobbin. The deniers used for such filaments are in excess of 20. However, for multi filament
yarn, the spinneret plate has several holes arranged in a particular fashion and all the extruded filaments from this spin-pack are
wound together on one bobbin to make a multi filament yarn. In a multi-hole spinneret plate, holes are placed is staggered
configuration so as to allow enough separation from each other and to allow cooling air to be available to all the filaments in the
quenching zone. Also, the space between the various holes allows filaments to spin independently without sticking to each other
during extrudate swell (also known as die swell) phenomena (explained later).

The main role of a spinneret is to impart cross sectional shape to the extruded filaments. The cross section may vary from circular to
trilobal, to hexalobal or hollow, etc. Usually it is thought that spinneret is able to orient polymer chains to make a fibre. It is not true.
Spinneret is much bigger than the dimensions of a polymer chain, and hence, can not induce orientation in coiled polymers.

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7.Design and role of quench chamber

The extruded filament from the spinneret is allowed to pass through an air quench zone (or chamber). This has mild flow of cooling
air at a low temperature (~15- 30 °C) with low to moderate relative humidity. The cooling air when comes in contact with the spun
filaments, takes away their heat and facilitates their solidification. This involves cooling of the polymer past melt crystallization
temperature and eventually to its glass transition temperature. As soon as the glass transition temperature is reached, the spinning is
considered to be complete. This is because, below glass transition temperature, polymer is in glassy state and can not extend any
further. The filament speed at which the polymer reaches glass transition temperature is also the spinning speed of the process.
Thereafter, the speed of the filament does not change and the polymer is wound on a bobbin using a take-up winder.

The uniformity of airflow is extremely important in controlling the variation of filament diameter in a spun fibre. It has been estimated
that a sudden but small change of 1% in quench air velocity may bring about a change of about 0.3% in cross sectional area of the
filament.

The quench chambers may be of various configurations- cross flow or radial flow. In cross flow the cooling air flows from one side to
the other side of the spinneret across the cross-section of the spinning path ( Figure 2.5(a) ). This kind of quench chamber is used
when a limited number of filaments are being spun in a filament yarn. This is because the filaments at the far end (in the direction of
air flow) of the spinneret get air which has been heated by the filaments at the near end. This problem becomes acute when a very
large number of spinneret holes are used in a staple fibre spinning line for making a tow. In such cases 10,000 or more holes are
normally present in a single spinneret. For quenching this large number of filaments, radial flow –either of outflow ( Figure 2.5(b) ) or
in-flow ( Figure 2.5(c) ) type is used. In outflow ( Figure 2.5(b) ), the cooling air enters at the centre of the spinneret and flows out
radially while in the in-flow type, the air enters from the periphery of the spinneret and flows into the centre of the spinning path. This
air then passes to the take up room along with the filament tow. The radial quenching can accommodate a large number of filaments
as more number of spinneret holes can be arranged in concentric circles. Since filaments get more uniform cooling in radial flow than
in cross flow, the structure and properties of the various filaments are closer to each other. Fibers with delicate dimensions are also
spun in a radial type quench chamber.

Figure 2.5 : Schematic representation of various air flows in

quench zone

8.Spin finish applicator:

Normally the spinning room and the take-up room are separated by a floor and the two have different atmospheric pressure from
each other. The spinning room is at a slightly higher pressure (by 10 mm H2O) than take-up room. This allows part of the cooling air

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to flow along with the delicate freshly spun filaments. The filaments are given a spin finish at the end of the spinning line (just after
the glass transition is reached) by one of the many techniques- kiss-roll or spray. The finish is normally sprayed onto the filaments in
high speed spinning machines.

The roles of the spin finish are to provide (i) lubrication- to reduce friction between the yarn and the metallic/ceramic parts of the
spinning line, (ii) antistatic property- to allow dissipation of static charge generated due to contact of yarn with the machine parts and
(iii) cohesion- to keep the filaments of a yarn together, so that unwinding becomes easier from the spun cake. Lubrication is provided
by aliphatic/alkyl molecules, which have very low van der waals attraction among them. Antistatic properties/cohesion is provided by
polar molecules, which have strong hydrogen or ionic bonding and provide path for charge dissipation. Since a spin finish needs both
types of molecules, it is generally made by emulsifying alkyl chain molecules with the help of surfactants in aqueous medium. A
balance of the two ingredients is important to achieve an optimum of all properties needed in a spin finish.

Readers may refer to literature for information on spin finish functions and its formulation.

9.What is a take-up winder?

The next important device is the take-up winder. Usually, the yarn is not wound directly on the winder but is passed through a take-up
godet, or a set of godet rollers ( Figure 2.1 ). This breaks the vertical path of the spinning and allows the winder to be adjusted
comfortably in the available space. Also, in an integrated system, the spun filaments may be subsequently drawn between the two
godets before winding (also known as in-line spin-draw frames). The spinning speed is decided by the speed of the first rotating
surface the filament comes in contact after the spinning chamber. This can be the first take-up godet or the take-up winder if the spun
filaments are being directly wound onto the winder without breaking their vertical path.

The winders may be friction driven ( Figure 2.6(a) ), where the bobbin is driven by a friction roller so that the surface speed of the
winder remains constant through out the formation of the yarn package. However, now a days, godets and friction rollers are not
being used in high speed spinning plants. This is because the yarn when comes in contact with such surfaces can be abraded and
may result in poor quality or poor wind-up. Therefore, new winders are used that have bobbins which are directly driven by a motor.
In order to compensate for the increasing speed as the diameter of the bobbin package changes, an auto feed back mechanism is
installed where the speed of the winder is regulated to maintain constant tension in the spinning line ( Figure 2.6(b) ).

Figure 2.6: Schematic representation of (a) friction winder, (b) straight

winder

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