Dr.

Ashok Khare
M.Text., Ph.D.
 Higher & Lower Rotor Speeds

 An increase in rotor speed results in improved

spinning stability up to a specific maximum speed,
depending on such factors as rotor diameter.
 However, too high a rotor speed results in poor
spinning stability. This is because of large centrifugal
forces acting in the fibres on the fibers in the rotor
groove. This increase spinning tension and result in
yarn breaks.
 Too low a rotor speed also results in poor spinning
stability. This is because, with lower speed, the yarn
tension is also low. The yarn twist, therefore can not
adequately propagate into the rotor groove.
 Minimum Possible Twist

 There is a certain minimum twist below which yarn cannot be

spun on rotor machine.
 Minimum twist depends upon rotor speed as well as rotor
diameter. When the rotor speed is increased, the minimum
twist required reduces. It is thus possible to spin the rotor
yarns at lower twist levels.
 When the rotor speed is further increased, the value of the
minimum twist require reaches a minimum value.
 When rotor speeds are still further increased, the required
minimum twist level again starts increasing.
 Minimum Possible Twist
 When the rotor speed is lower than a certain limit,
spinning tension is much reduced. This reduction is to
such an extent, that the false twist generated by
centrifugal force action against navel is insufficient to
cause twist integration at peeling point. So a higher
minimum twist may be required to ensure spinning
stability.
 Therefore, when the rotor speed is increased from its
lower value, the minimum twist required level, reduces.
 This reduction in minimum twist required continues up
to a certain rotor speed.
 When rotor speed is increased beyond this point, the
centrifugal force rapidly increases. This leads to increase
in spinning tension at the time of inserting twist in the
fibre ribbon in the rotor grooves.
 Minimum Possible Twist

 The yarn twist,

therefore, has to
be increased to
improve yarn
strength to make
the yarn
withstand the
tension. This
necessitates the
required
minimum twist
level to be higher.
 Minimum Possible Twist / Twist Generation
 Thus, there is an optimum rotor speed (Graph in the
earlier slide) for minimum twist level at which yarn can
be spun. This optimum level is higher with lower rotor
diameter as shown in the same figure. Thus, though
higher rotor speed is achievable with 32 mm diameter
than 40 mm diameter, minimum twist level at which
yarn can be spun is also higher with smaller rotor
diameter.
 Twist Generation :
 Yarn tail is pressed against both the rotor groove as well
as navel by the centrifugal force caused by rotation of
rotor. Yarn tail therefore gets twisted as it is withdrawn
from rotor. However, friction between yarn and navel
does not allow the twist to flow through Navel (towards
take-off point) until a sufficient extra twist is built up.
 Twist Generation
 This extra twist is the
false twist in the yarn
tail.
 The Yarn in twisting
zone is very weak and
requires a higher
twist than in fully
spun yarn to enable
spinning. This is
provided by false
twist. As the yarn
passes the contact
point with navel, it
unwinds and false
twist is removed.
 Some Typical Terms

 1. Centrifugal Force = t n2 R2
Where : t = Yarn linear density (tex)
R = Rotor groove radius (m) & n = Rotor speed (rpm)
 2. Spinning tension F (cN) is given by : F = k1 R2 n2 t
 Where k1 is a constant.
 3. Peeling tension = k2 x Centrifugal force
 4. Grosberg1gives the following empirical equation for
 spinning tension : F = 0.6 tω2 R2
Where ω = angular velocity of rotor.
 Owing to Air Drag, actual tensions are higher by 28%.
Hence, F = 0.72 tω2 R2
 Yarn Properties
 Rotor Speed affects the productivity –
 Rotor speed has insignificant or marginal effect on yarn
strength. But elongation is brought down steeply with
increase in rotor speed.
 With higher rotor speed, the fibres are peeled-off & twisted
at higher tension. This makes the yarn more compact.
Fibre curliness is reduced.
 The higher rotor speeds leads to higher centrifugal force. It
increases wrapper fibres. It also increases pressure on
Navel. The higher pressure increases the frictional
resistance at Navel and this leads to more false twist.
 The twist difference at Navel (before & after Navel) thus
increases with rotor speed.
 As a result, elongation drops with increase in Rotor speed.
Effect of Rotor Speed on Yarn Properties
 Yarn Properties – Rotor Speed

 Yarn irregularity( U% and Imperfections) increase

markedly with increase in rotor speed (earlier Fig.).
 Increase in rotor speed means higher production. This
requires higher feed. This will mean that the fibre
individualization and trash removal by opening roller will
be inferior. Neps in particular increase steeply with rotor
speed. Fibres have also less time to align themselves in
rotor groove and fibre alignment will be poor7. As a result
U% and imperfections increase.
 Steep increase in neps is partly because of close wrapping
of wrapper fibres. This increases the mass at these places
and hence they get counted as neps.
 When nep portion is examined under low power
microscope, it is revealed that quite a significant portion
 Yarn Properties – Rotor Speed

 of such neps are due to wrapper fibres.

 The higher rotor speed leads to higher false twist which
ultimately increases wrapper fibres.
 When Tandem card was used in the above experiment, it
did not show any consistent improvement over normal
card. This is because, the effective individualization at
opening roller more or less compensates the advantage of
using Tandem Card.
 Kampen & etal , with cotton, found that imperfections
increased with rotor speed, it was not so with polyester or
polypropylene. This may be owing these fibres being of
longer length and they getting tied better as wrapper
fibres.
 Yarn Properties – Rotor Speed
 Simpson and Patureau on the other hand found increase
in yarn strength up to 40,000 rpm and reduction
thereafter with 49 tex yarn and continuous reduction in
strength with rotor speed with 25 tex yarn. This is partly
because deterioration in fibre parallelisation at higher
speeds.
 Good carding and strong & finer fibre enable higher
rotor speed. Simpson and Murray found increased
deterioration in yarn quality with rotor speed with
combed material. The yarn regularity and imperfections
deteriorate with higher rotor speed. Also, the number of
wrapper fibres and their frequency occurrence increase.
Rotor speed affects greatly affects yarn elongation and
regularity. Box and Behnken factorial design showed best
yarn quality at lowest rotor speeds.
 Yarn Properties – Rotor Diameter

 Manohar, Rakshit and Balasubramanian5 reported that

increase of rotor diameter up to 46 mm did not have much
effect on strength with tandem card but increasing it up to 56
mm leads to a significant drop in strength.
 Yarn elongation is very sensitive to rotor diameter and drops
markedly with increase in diameter. This is because of higher
centrifugal force on yarn tail, which increases wrappers and
makes yarn more compact.
 While U% and thick and thin places are not much affected,
the neps increase markedly with increase in rotor diameter.
 Increase in irregularity due to higher wrapper fibres is
compensated by the improvement from back doublings with
higher diameter. Therefore, U% is unaffected.
 Neps increase with rotor diameter because of higher wraps
per unit length. as shown by Kampen et al9. The wraps are
also more tightly wound with higher rotor diameter.
Yarn Properties - Effect of Rotor Diameter
 Yarn Properties
 Nawaz et al found that increase in rotor diameter led to
significant deterioration in yarn evenness.
 Simpson and Patureau found that fibre orientation deteriorates
with increase in rotor speed, rotor diameter and use of grooved
navel.
 Barella et al found that rotor diameter affects tenacity and
regularity.
 Vila et al concluded that rotor speed, rotor diameter and
preparatory process influence hairiness of rotor yarns.
However, Lord claims that hooked fibres will reduce with
increase in rotor diameter and will therefore improve yarn
quality.
 Rotor diameter should be sufficiently large to enable formation
of fibre ring on the rotor groove. Normally rotor diameter
should be at least 1.2 times that of fibre length. Higher rotor
diameters should be used as the count becomes coarser. Energy
consumption and spinning tension increase with rotor
diameter and so lower rotor diameters should be used at higher
rotor speeds.
Rotor Diameter & Rotor Speed
 Rotor Wall & Rotor Groove

 Rotor Slide Wall Height : By

increasing rotor slide wall
height and the distance
between peeling point and
navel, wild fibres in yarn
wrapper decreases and
strength is improved. This
enables spinning of finer
count.
 Rotor Groove : Both, the
Angle of rotor slide wall to the
vertical (A) and the Design &
Location of rotor groove (G)
are important.
 Rotor Wall & Rotor Groove

 Rotor wall angle A ranges from

12 - 500. A smaller angle
facilitates higher rotor speed.

 Groove angle G ranges from 30

- 600. Large angle is used for
coarser counts. With the
narrower groove angle,
compaction of yarn is
improved leading to higher
strength. But dust and trash
accumulation will be higher.
 Different Rotor Grooves - Rieter

 U and DS - wide groove angle grooves - for coarse and

denim yarns.
 TC groove - wider groove and extended groove angle
compared to T. But withthe same groove shape. TC -
preferred for very coarse counts and denims. TC gives
yarns with higher abrasion resistance.
 T and K grooves - narrow with small groove radius.
universally suitable for all counts of cotton and man-
made fibres. G has also a narrow groove but larger
groove radius - suitable for bulky knitting yarns.
 Compared to the G, the groove angle and groove
radius are larger in GM. But groove shape are same -
the latter used in fine count range.
 U and DS grooves - high groove angle, ideally suited
for coarse, soft and bulky twisted knitting yarns and
denims. Used for cottons and blends.
 Rotor Cleaning
 An essential element in rotor spinning – Automatic Rotor
cleaning.
 This is one of the major advantages of the rotor spinning
system compared with other spinning processes, which are
unable to clean the raw material fed to them at yarn spinning
stage.
 Large majority of Trash particles are eliminated at opening
roller. However, the light trash & dust still reaches the rotor
through transporting air. They also get deposited in to the
rotor grooves.
 These deposits either interfere with twist integration (twist
propagation) resulting in thread break.
 Sometimes, the deposits continue to accumulate in the rotor
groove without provoking thread breaks. This changes the
groove geometry, thus slowly changing (creeping change) the
yarn quality
 Rotor Cleaning
 The dust or fine trash deposits in the rotor groove are not
distributed uniformly over the rotor circumference. This
results into periodic yarn defects known as moiré effect.
 The rotor groove, therefore, must be cleaned at certain
intervals. This involves automatically interrupting the
spinning process after a preset period of time.
 The spinning robot approaches the spinning position and
cleans the rotor. However, this would involve an interruption
in the spinning process and also an extra join in the yarn. The
machine efficiency is also affected.
 A preventive cleaning (anticipatory) of the rotor is therefore,
performed only in exceptional cases, especially when spinning
linen and severely soiled raw materials.
 In majority of applications, rotor cleaning is performed
automatically at each piecing operation during spinning.
 Rotor Cleaning – Rotating Cleaning Model with Scrapper & Nozzles

 Thus, at each end down,

each quality stop or each
package change, the rotor
cleaning is carried-out.
 A clean rotor groove is
absolutely a must for both
successful spinning and
high piecing quality.
 On modern systems the
rotor groove is cleaned by
means of a rotating cleaning
head. The cleaning head
cleans the rotor groove with
2 scrapers whereas, 3 air jets
clean the rotor slip wall and
the groove.
 Rotor Cleaning

 Design of Self-cleaning
rotor by BD D1 machine is
shown in Side Figure .
Groove shape in self-
cleaning type permits
cleaning the trash & dust
inside rotor groove by
the rotating yarn tail as
the air flow is downward.
 Murray and Fork17 found
lower dust accumulations
in rotors with
perforations than normal
rotors.
 Rotor Cleaning
 Self pumping and external suction systems :
 Suction required to transport the fibre to rotor is provided
by the rotation of rotor in self pumping system.
 However the suction thus generated is low and as a result
fibre straightening in transport tube is low and frequent
cleaning of rotor is required to remove accumulated dust
and trash.
 External suction system is therefore invariably used in
modern rotor machines. One drawback with this system is
that there is a deposition of dust and trash on the rotor
rim, and it slides into rotor groove. This drawback is
overcome in self-cleaning rotor. Further, the power
consumption will be higher than self pumping type.
 Navel
 There is a friction between yarn and navel. This is caused by
pressing action due to centrifugal force. Yarn rolls around itself
as it passes through the navel to overcome the friction. This
results in false twist in the yarn tail (between Navel & peel-off
point in the rotor.
 This false twist is essential to improve the strength of yarn at
peeling zone and enable spinning at normal twist factor and at
high-speed. Without false twist, minimum twist at which yarn
can be spun will be very high.
 Twist flow across the navel reduces with reduction in
coefficient of friction (of navel surface) or wrap angle (around
navel and contact surface factor.
 If navel is made to rotate at the same speed as rotor, the twist
stoppage (hindrance to twist flow) at navel will be minimum.
 NAVELS
 Smooth navel made of steel gives the best yarn quality in terms
of evenness and imperfections. Cheng and Cheng found
higher yarn strength with smooth navel Raudbaari and
Eskadandamejad confirmed increase in strength with lower
number of thick places.
 Navel type affects hairiness but has no effect on abrasion
resistance.
 Spiral navel reduces the contact area of the yarn and gives
higher strength with smoother and closed surface. However,
the benefits from spiral knowledge are contradictory. They
seem to vary with type of material. Cheng and Cheng found
higher strength with spiral navel in 40 tex yarn.
 Maghassem and Fallalpurfound best performance with spiral
navel without torque stop and close setting between navel and
rotor.
 NAVEL

 However Tyagi et al found lower tenacity and elongation

with spiral nozzle compared to notched nozzle with
acrylic/cotton yarns.
 Nibikora et al found best yarn quality with spiral grooved
ceramic navel and pin type opening roller with
silk/cashmere blends.
 Navels with grooves or notches, lift the yarn off navel
surface for short periods and cause the yarn tail to vibrate
at high frequencies. The vibrations facilitate twist
propagation into rotor groove and improve spinning
stability. Vibration reduces roller friction whereas, sliding
friction is increased. These navels are therefore preferred
with short staple cottons and waste to reduce end
breakage rate and achieve higher rotor speed.
 NAVEL
 However, irregularity, imperfections, hairiness and harshness
increase with such navels (grooves & notches). With increase in
no. of grooves, there is deterioration in yarn quality.
 Nawaz et al reported that finely grooved navel gives less
hairiness as compared to coarsely grooved navels with built-in
notches. With coarsely grooved navel, there is more
roughening of the yarn is more.
 Closer setting between navel and rotor, increases the contact
area of yarn on navel. This increases false twist.
 Yarn hairiness, neps and lint (fly & fluff) generation are
affected by the setting between navel and rotor. This Setting is
adjusted with the help spacers inserted behind navel.
 Van der Marwa and Veldaman found improved yarn quality by
reducing the distance between navel and rotor by 2 mm.
However , the closer setting increases spinning instability.
 NAVEL
 With larger navel diameter, the wrap length on the navel
surface is increased. This leads to 10% higher strength, 5%
lower elongation, and reduction in end breakages and rotor
deposits with short staple cottons.
 Navels with smaller radius of curvature result in smoother
yarns with fewer wrapper fibres. Ceramic navels have a higher
precision than steel navels. They give a longer life.
 Erbil et al found that number of notches, physical form of
notches (concave/convex), structure of navel surface, surface
geometry (flat/spiral) have critical influence on hairiness of
blend rotor yarns. K4Ks navel (ceramic, 4 notches, spiral)
results in maximum hairiness and K6KF (Ceramic, 6 notches,
flat) gives minimum hairiness.
 Najar et al replaced navel by an air-jet nozzle to give false twist
to the yarn. Use of air-jet nozzle with Z-direction false twist
and jet angle of 900 improves strength, hairiness, abrasion
resistance of yarn, but with a slight deterioration in regularity.
 Navel

 Whirl inserts are also

used inside nozzle to
open up the wrapper
fibres and thereby
produce a bulky and
hairy yarn with soft
handle. One example is
the Belcoro navel KS2R4.
Asymmetrical groove
design by EmillBroell
(adjoining Figure)
results in less micro-dust
and debris and can help
to increase rotor speed
by 15%.
 Twist Loss in Rotor
 Twist loss in rotor spinning takes place because of slippage of
yarn tail on rotor surface.
 Twist loss % = (Tm - Ty) / Tm) x 100
 Where, Tm = Machine Twist ; Ty - Actual measured twist
 Manich et al found increase in twist loss with linear density,
twist multiplier, diameter of navel and with grooved navel.
 Twist loss increases with those navels that produce more false
twist.
 Rotors that produce more friction with yarn reduce twist loss.
Palamutcu and Kadoglu3reported lower twist loss with coarser
and shorter fibres, which may be because of lower incidence of
wrapper fibres.
 Opening roller teeth type has significant effect on twist loss.
Higher opening roller speed improves fibre separation, reduces
sheath fibres and as a result improves twist efficiency.
 Twist Loss in Rotor
 Salhotra also found that twist loss increases with increase in
sheath fibres. Further, the % sheath fibres increases with fibre
length and as a result longer fibres result in more twist loss.
Increase of navel diameter increases twist loss.
 Winding Tension & Package Built:
 Tension draft between take up roller and winding drum should
be kept between 0.94 and 0.9839. Lower tension draft below
0.94 will result in unsatisfactory winding and tension draft
above 0.98 will result in too many end breakages.
 As tension draft is increased up to 0.99, the strength is
improved and elongation is reduced.
 As tension draft is increased up to 0.97, unevenness and
imperfections increase and hairiness reduces.
 Effect of Fibre properties on Rotor Yarns
 Rotor yarn strength is relatively insensitive to fibres length.
 It is more sensitive to fibre linear-density.
 London & Jorden observed that when fibre length was varied
from 32 mm to 50 mm, there was little change in yarn
strength.
 Short fibres are not detrimental to yarn strength in rotor
spinning. However, over-long fibres can be damaging in rotor
spinning with opening roller. It has been found that increase
in staple length deteriorates the strength of rotor yarns.
 Yarns spun from short staple fibres are – stronger, more even
and have less imperfections than those spun with medium
length fibres. Contrary to this finding, yarn lea strength was
found to increase with increase in fibre length.
 In yet another study, it was found that increase in fibre mean
length inreased rotor yarn strength. Thus, there is wide
disagreement as for the effect of fibre length on yarn strength.
Effect of Fibre properties on Rotor Yarns
 Effect of Fibre properties on Rotor Yarns
 The graph (previous slide), brings out the following facts:
 Fibre length has a significant effect on yarn tenacity,
evenness and imperfections.
 There is always an optimum fibre length (30 mm in a
typical case), which gives the best yarn quality. This 30
mm length seems to have a definite relation with the rotor
diameter (46 mm) on Suessen Spin-Tester.
 The deterioration in the yarn quality was not possibly due
to rotor diameter. In the study max. fibres length was 40
mm. According to Grosberg & Mansour The value of the
ratio of rotor dia. To fibre length should not be below 1.1
 Therefore for 40 mm length the rotor dia. Should be
greater than 44 mm, which is the case in the present
study.
 Effect of Fibre properties on Rotor Yarns
 Chattopadhyay also confirmed the loss in tenacity with longer
fibres. There is almost no loss up to 35 mm in tenacity. But at
40 mm (graph) there is significant drop – possibly may be due
to the same reasons.
 With longer fibres, the wrapper fibres increase. It is well
known that these wrappers do not contribute to the strength.
This possibly is also the reason for decrease in tenacity with
longer fibres.
 There is good negative correlation between percentage of
sheath fibres (wrappers) and twist loss. Therefore, when the
wrapper fibres increase (due to longer length), the twist loss
(lower actual twist) also increases. This can also be the rason
for loss in tenacity (earlier graph).
 Lastly, at a given opening roller speed, there will be good fibre
separation with short fibres.
 Effect of Fibre properties on Rotor Yarns
 With a good fibre separation, it is expected that the
number of doublings on the rotor surface will be better.
When the length of the fibre increased, the fibre
separation becomes inadequate. The yarn evenness
deteriorates, and imperfections increase.
 Effect of Lowering Twist of Rotor Yarns:
 The tensile strength for all linear densities decrease with
lowering twist level from 700-450 tpm. Similar trend is
observed with respect to elongation. However, coarser
counts have higher yarn strength and elongation than
finer counts.
 Reason behind this effect possibly is that the function of
twist is to hold the constituent fibers in yarn assembly
thus providing coherence to yarn.
 Effect of Lowering Twist of Rotor Yarns

 With decreasing twist levels binding effect of yarn or

source of coherence reduces.
 Furthermore with decreasing twist levels delivery of
yarn increases which also affects feeding rate. This
increase in feeding and delivery rate reduces the
interval of fibers’ stay in rotor groove. This results in
reduction of number of core fibers than number of
fibers in intermediate zone.
 In addition with reducing twist, helix angle of core
fibers also decreases due to which lateral force holding
the fibers together gets weakened and fibers in yarn are
held less tightly.
 Effect of Lowering Twist of Rotor Yarns
 This increases
slippage of fibers
under tensile loading
and hence number of
fibers contributing to
overall strength of the
yarn gets reduced.
 Consequently yarn
can not withstand
against higher load as
well as can not be
elongated as much as
at higher twist.
 This effect is more
pronounced with finer
yarn counts.