Process and apparatus for producing open-end spun yarn

Abstract

A process and apparatus for producing open-end spun yarn using an electrostatic field produced by a pair of spaced electrodes in combination with a spinning rotor having an acutely inclined circumferential wall and a circumferential groove at the junction between the inner surface of the rotor wall and the planar surface of the rotor. Staple fibers are fed to the electrostatic field where they are generally linearly oriented and straightened and from which the fibers are aerodynamically withdrawn and fed onto the inner surface of the inclined rotor wall by means of a feed passageway tangentially oriented to the inclined rotor wall and having a gradually decreasing cross-sectional area so as to impose upon the fibers fed therethrough an ever-increasing velocity. The fibers centrifugally progress along the inner surface of the inclined rotor wall and gather in the circumferential rotor groove at which point the fibers begin to combine through cohesion both with other fibers in the groove and with the fibers in the tail of the yarn which is being twisted and withdrawn from the rotor, thereby forming a strand of fibers cohering to the tail of yarn previously formed. The formed yarn is continuously withdrawn, the continuous rotation of the rotor causing the tail of the yarn being withdrawn to be continuously swept along the inner circumference of the rotor thereby imparting twist to the strand of fibers at the tail, and also effecting the addition through cohesion of new fibers to the tail from the circumferential groove.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.