Can creels for feeding fibre slivers to textile machines

A sliver feeding arrangement for simultaneoulsy feeding a plurality of moving active slivers to related textile machine means, comprising a plurality of first sources for providing a plurality of said active slivers, each of said first sources providing at least one active sliver, means for guiding each of said plurality of active slivers in their movement in predetermined paths so that said active slivers during at least a portion of said paths are moving generally parallel to each other, means for operatively engaging said active slivers as to draw said active slivers from said first sources, move said active slivers along said paths and feed said active slivers toward said textile machine/means, a second source for providing a reserve sliver, at least a pair of feed rollers, support means supporting said pair of feed rollers as to maintain said feed rollers generally transverse to and in spaced relationship to said active slivers moving through said portion of said paths, said feed rollers maintaining a leading portion of said reserve sliver therebetween, drive means operatively connected to said feed rollers and effective to at times drive said feed rollers as to thereby feed said reserve sliver therebetween, detecting means effective to detect the existance of each of said plurality of said active slivers and being further effective to detect the occurrence of a break or run-out in any of said plurality of said active slivers, upon detecting a said occurence of a break or run-out said detecting means also being effective for causing the occurrence of an electrical output signal for application to and consequent energization of said drive means to cause energization of said feed rollers to thereby cause feeding of said reserve sliver to thereby replace the detected broken or run-out sliver, and time delay means effective for delaying the said energization of said feed rollers until after the expiration of a preselected interval of time subsequent to said means detecting the said occurence of a break or run-out, said time delay means and said preselected interval of time being thereby effective to provide for a selected degree of overlapping as between the said leading portion of said reserve sliver and a trailing portion of said detected broken or run-out active sliver.