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53-570: The Arlington Mills Historic District encompasses a major 19th century textile manufacturing complex in Lawrence and Methuen, Massachusetts . Developed between 1865 and 1925, it was one of the state's largest textile operations at its height. At the time of its listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985, the mill complex was owned by Malden Mills . The Arlington Mills occupy 75 acres (30 ha) of land straddling

106-510: A cotton gin . The cotton gin separates seeds and removes the "trash" (dirt, stems and leaves) from the fibre. In a saw gin, circular saws grab the fibre and pull it through a grating that is too narrow for the seeds to pass. A roller gin is used with longer-staple cotton. Here, a leather roller captures the cotton. A knife blade, set close to the roller, detaches the seeds by drawing them through teeth in circular saws and revolving brushes which clean them away. The ginned cotton fibre, known as lint,

159-511: A compact "brick" of seed-cotton, weighing approximately 21,000 pounds or 9.5 tonnes (16 un-ginned bales), which can be stored in the field or in the "gin yard" until it is ginned. Each ginned bale weighs roughly 480 pounds (220 kg). An industry-exclusive on-board round module builder was offered by John Deere in 2007. In c.2008 the Case IH Module Express 625 was designed in collaboration with ginners and growers to provide

212-404: A cone-shaped bundle of fibres known as a "cop", as the carriage returns. Mule spinning produces a finer thread than ring spinning . The mule was an intermittent process, as the frame advanced and returned a distance of five feet. It was the descendant of the 1779 Crompton device. It produces a softer, less twisted thread that was favoured for fine fabrics and wefts. The ring was a descendant of

265-476: A continuous soft fleecy sheet, known as a lap. Scutching refers to the process of cleaning cotton of its seeds and other impurities. The first scutching machine was invented in 1797, but did not come into further mainstream use until after 1808 or 1809, when it was introduced and used in Manchester, England. By 1816, it had become generally adopted. The scutching machine worked by passing the cotton through

318-424: A loose strand (sliver or tow). The cotton comes off of the picking machine in laps, and is then taken to carding machines. The carders line up the fibres neatly to make them easier to spin. The carding machine consists mainly of one big roller with smaller ones surrounding it. All of the rollers are covered in small teeth, and as the cotton is moved forwards, the teeth get finer (i.e. closer together). The cotton leaves

371-424: A machine with large spikes, called an opener . To fluff up the cotton and remove the vegetable matter, the cotton is sent through a picker or a similar machine. In a picker , the cotton is beaten with a beater bar to loosen it up. It is then fed through various rollers, which serve to remove the vegetable matter. The cotton, aided by fans, then collects on a screen and gets fed through more rollers where it emerges as

424-445: A pair of rollers, and then striking it with iron or steel bars called beater bars or beaters. The beaters, which turn very quickly, strike the cotton hard and knock the seeds out. This process is done over a series of parallel bars so as to allow the seeds to fall through. At the same time, air is blown across the bars, which carries the cotton into a cotton chamber. In the carding process, the fibres are separated and then assembled into

477-415: A plain loom. A Northrop Loom was fully automatic and was mass-produced between 1909 and the mid-1960s. Modern looms run faster and do not use a shuttle: there are air jet looms, water jet looms, and rapier looms . Ends and Picks: Picks refer to the weft, ends refer to the warp. The coarseness of the cloth can be expressed as the number of picks and ends per quarter-inch square, or per inch square. Ends

530-413: A very thick rope of cotton fibres, the slivers are separated into rovings. Generally speaking, for machine processing, a roving is about the width of a pencil. These rovings (or slubbings) are then what are used in the spinning process. Most spinning today is done using break, or open-end spinning . This is a technique where the fibres are blown by air into a rotating drum, where they attach themselves to

583-452: Is a major industry . It is largely based on the conversion of fibre into yarn , then yarn into fabric. These are then dyed or printed, fabricated into cloth which is then converted into useful goods such as clothing , household items, upholstery and various industrial products. Different types of fibres are used to produce yarn. Cotton remains the most widely used and common natural fiber making up 90% of all-natural fibers used in

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636-488: Is a weft knit. Finishing is a broad range of physical and chemical processes/treatments that complete one stage of textile manufacturing, sometimes in preparation for the next step. Finishing adds value to the product and makes it more attractive, useful and functional for the end-user. Fresh off the loom, cotton fabric not only contains impurities, including warp size, but it also requires further treatment to develop its full potential and to add to its value. Depending on

689-433: Is always written first. For example: Heavy domestics are made from coarse yarns, such as 10's to 14's warp and weft, and about 48 ends and 52 picks. Associated job titles include piecer, scavenger , weaver, tackler , draw boy. When a hand loom was located in the home, children helped with the weaving process from an early age. Piecing needs dexterity, and a child can be as productive as an adult. When weaving moved from

742-470: Is boiled in an alkali solution, which forms a soap with free fatty acids. A kier is usually enclosed, so the solution of sodium hydroxide can be boiled under pressure, excluding oxygen , which would degrade the cellulose in the fibre. If the appropriate reagents are used, scouring will also remove size from the fabric, although desizing often precedes scouring and is considered to be a separate process. Preparation and scouring are prerequisites to most of

795-404: Is called Indian. The cotton seed is pressed into cooking oil. The husks and meal are processed into animal feed, and the stems into paper. Ginning, bale-making and transportation are done in the country of origin. Cotton is shipped to mills in large 500-pound bales. When the cotton comes out of a bale, it is all packed together and still contains vegetable matter. The bale is broken open using

848-505: Is considered to be 'A Treatise on the Art of Weaving' by John Murphy. Cotton is the world's most important natural fibre. In the year 2007, the global yield was 25 million tons from 35 million hectares cultivated in more than 50 countries. There are six stages to the manufacturing of cotton textiles: Cotton is grown in locations with long, hot, dry summers with plenty of sunshine and low humidity. Indian cotton, Gossypium arboreum ,

901-404: Is done by pulling yarn from two or more bobbins and twisting it together, in a direction opposite to the one it was spun in. Depending on the weight desired, the cotton may or may not be plied, and the number of strands twisted together varies. Gassing is the process of passing yarn very rapidly through a series of Bunsen gas flames in a gassing frame, to burn off the projecting fibres and to make

954-480: Is done in two different ways; warp and weft. Weft knitting (as seen in the pictures) is similar in method to hand knitting with stitches all connected to each other horizontally. Various weft machines can be configured to produce textiles from a single spool of yarn or multiple spools, depending on the size of the machine cylinder (in which the needles are bedded). In a warp knit , there are many pieces of yarn and there are vertical chains, zigzagged together by crossing

1007-417: Is finer but the staple is only suitable for hand processing. American cotton, Gossypium hirsutum , produces the longer staple needed for mechanised textile production. The planting season is from September to mid-November, and the crop is harvested between March and June. The cotton bolls are harvested by stripper harvesters and spindle pickers that remove the entire boll from the plant. The cotton boll

1060-461: Is mercerised under tension, and all alkali must be washed out before the tension is released, or shrinkage will take place. Many other chemical treatments may be applied to cotton fabrics to produce low flammability, crease-resistance and other qualities, but the four most important non-chemical finishing treatments are: Singeing is designed to burn off the surface fibres from the fabric to produce smoothness. The fabric passes over brushes to raise

1113-472: Is the application of colour in the form of a paste or ink to the surface of a fabric in a predetermined pattern. It can be described as a form of localised dyeing. Printing designs onto previously dyed fabric is also possible. Production of cotton requires arable land . In addition, cotton is farmed intensively and uses large amounts of fertilizer and 25% of the world's insecticides. Native Indian varieties of cotton were rainwater fed, but modern hybrids used for

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1166-504: Is the seed pod of the cotton plant; attached to each of the thousands of seeds are fibres about 2.5 cm long. There is a higher rate of cotton being produced compared to the actual workers needed to produce the material. In 2013 a cotton farmer in Mississippi, Bower Flowers, produced around 13,000 bales of cotton in that year alone. This amount of cotton could be used to produce up to 9.4 million T-shirts. The seed cotton goes into

1219-419: Is then compressed into bales which are about 1.5 m tall and weigh almost 220 kg. Only 33% of the crop is usable lint. Commercial cotton is graded and priced according to its quality; this broadly relates to the average length of the staple and the variety of the plant. Longer-staple cotton (2½ in to 1¼ in) is called Egyptian, medium staple (1¼ in to ¾ in) is called American upland, and short staple (less than ¾ in)

1272-711: The Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company manufactured cotton pickers using an improved Rust design. In the following years mechanical pickers were gradually improved and were increasingly adopted by farmers. The introduction of the cotton picker has been cited as a factor in the Second Great Migration . To make mechanical cotton pickers more practical, improvements in the cotton plant and in cotton culture were also necessary. In earlier times, cotton fields had to be picked by hand three and four times each harvest season because

1325-852: The Great Depression it was difficult to obtain financing to develop their inventions. In 1935 the Rust brothers founded the Rust Cotton Picker Company in Memphis, Tennessee , and on 31 August 1936 demonstrated the Rust picker at the Delta Experiment Station in Stoneville, Mississippi . Although the first Rust picker was not without serious deficiencies, it did pick cotton and the demonstration attracted considerable national press coverage. Nevertheless,

1378-422: The weft . The warp, which must be strong, needs to be presented to loom on a warp beam. The weft passes across the loom in a shuttle that carries the yarn on a pirn . These pirns are automatically changed by the loom. Thus, the yarn needs to be wrapped onto a beam, and onto pirns before weaving can commence. After being spun and plied, the cotton thread is taken to a warping room where the winding machine takes

1431-476: The Arkwright Water frame of 1769. It was a continuous process, the yarn was coarser, had a greater twist and was stronger, thus suitable for use as warp thread. Ring spinning is slow due to the distance the thread must pass around the ring. Sewing thread was made of several threads twisted together, or doubled. This is the process where each of the bobbins is rewound to give a tighter bobbin. Plying

1484-507: The Rusts' company did not have the capability of manufacturing cotton pickers in significant quantities. With the success of the Rust picker, other companies redoubled their efforts to produce practical pickers not based on the Rust patents. Then, widespread adoption was delayed by the manufacturing demands of World War II . The International Harvester Company produced a commercially successful commercial cotton picker in 1944. After World War II,

1537-517: The art and craft industries. Until the 18th and 19th centuries, the textile industry was a household work. It became mechanised in the 18th and 19th centuries, and has continued to develop through science and technology since the twentieth century. Specifically, ancient civilizations in India, Egypt, China, sub-Saharan Africa, Eurasia, South America, and North and East Africa all had some forms of textile production. The first book about textile manufacturing

1590-427: The bolls matured at different rates. It was not practical to delay picking until all the bolls were ready for picking because the quality of the cotton deteriorated as soon as bolls opened. But about the time mechanical pickers were introduced, plant breeders developed hybrid cotton varieties with bolls higher off the ground and that ripened uniformly. With those innovations, the harvester could make just one pass through

1643-507: The boundary between Lawrence and Methuen. It is bounded on the east by Broadway, a historic post road, and on the west by the Spicket River , which originally supplied it with power. The complex has 23 buildings, most of which are of brick construction. The largest is the 1896 wool-combing mill, which is 750 feet (230 m) long, while the 1906 worsted weaving mill is 600 feet (180 m) long. The first industrial use of this site

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1696-422: The carding machine in the form of a sliver: a large rope of fibres. In a wider sense, carding can refer to these four processes: Combing is optional, but is used to remove the shorter fibres, creating a stronger yarn. Several slivers are combined. Each sliver will have thin and thick spots, and by combining several slivers together, a more consistent size can be reached. Since combining several slivers produces

1749-422: The cotton yarn. Warp knits do not stretch as much as a weft knits, and they are run-resistant. A weft knit is not run-resistant, but it has more stretch. This is especially true if spools of elastane are processed from separate spool containers and interwoven through the cylinder with cotton yarn, giving the finished product more flexibility and preventing it from having a 'baggy' appearance. The average t-shirt

1802-504: The dents of the reed and the eyes of the healds, in the order indicated by the draft. A pirn-winding frame was used to transfer the weft from cheeses of yarn onto the pirns that would fit into the shuttle. At this point, the thread is woven. Depending on the era, one person could manage anywhere from 3 to 100 machines. In the mid-nineteenth century, four was the standard number. A skilled weaver in 1925 could run 6 Lancashire Looms . As time progressed, new mechanisms were added that stopped

1855-410: The fabric is to be dyed a deep shade, then lower levels of bleaching are acceptable. However, for white bedding and for medical applications, the highest levels of whiteness and absorbency are essential. A further possibility is mercerising, during which the fabric is treated with a caustic soda solution, to cause swelling of the fibres. This results in improved lustre, strength and dye affinity. Cotton

1908-403: The fabric will shrink less upon laundering. Dyeing is commonly carried out with an anionic direct dye by completely immersing the fabric (or yarn) in an aqueous dye bath according to a prescribed procedure. For improved fastness to washing, rubbing and light, further dyeing methods can be used. These require more complex chemistry during processing, and are thus more expensive to apply. Printing

1961-413: The fibres, then passes over a plate heated by gas flames. During raising, the fabric surface is treated with sharp teeth to lift the surface fibres, thereby imparting downiness, softness and warmth, as in flannelette. Calendering is a process in which the fabric is passed between heated rollers to generate smooth, polished or embossed effects. Sanforisation is a form of mechanical pre-shrinking, so that

2014-402: The field. Also, herbicides were developed to defoliate the plants and drop their leaves before the picker came through, producing a cleaner harvest. The first harvesters were only capable of harvesting one row of cotton at a time, but were still able to replace up to forty hand laborers . The current cotton picker is a self-propelled machine that removes cotton lint and seed (seed-cotton) from

2067-878: The home to the mill, children were often allowed to help their older sisters, and laws had to be made to prevent child labour from becoming established. The working conditions of cotton production were often harsh, with long hours, low pay, and dangerous machinery. Children, above all, were also prone to physical abuse and often forced to work in unsanitary conditions. It should also be noted that Children who worked in handlooms often faced extreme poverty and were unable to obtain an education. The working conditions of cotton production were often harsh, with long hours, low pay, and dangerous machinery. Children, above all, were also prone to physical abuse and often forced to work in unsanitary conditions. It should also be noted that Children who worked in handlooms often faced extreme poverty and were unable to obtain an education. Knitting by machine

2120-552: The later help of his brother Mack Rust. Other inventors had tried designs with a barbed spindle to twist cotton fibers onto the spindle and then pull the cotton from the boll, but these early designs were impractical because the spindle became clogged with cotton. Rust determined that a smooth, moist spindle could be used to strip the fibers from the boll without trapping them in the machinery. In 1933 John Rust received his first patent , and eventually, he and his brother owned forty-seven patents on cotton picking machinery. However, during

2173-445: The lint makes it to the basket at the rear of the picker. The other type of picker is the "spindle" picker. It uses rows of barbed spindles that rotate at high speed and remove the seed-cotton from the plant. The seed-cotton is then removed from the spindles by a counter-rotating doffer and is then blown up into the basket. Once the basket is full the picker dumps the seed-cotton into a " module builder ". The module builder creates

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2226-546: The loom any time something went wrong. The mechanisms checked for such things as broken warp or weft threads, the shuttle going straight across, and if the shuttle was empty. Forty of these Northrop Looms or automatic looms could be operated by one skilled worker. The three primary movements of a loom are shedding, picking, and beating-up. The Lancashire Loom was the first semi-automatic loom. Jacquard looms and Dobby looms are looms that have sophisticated methods of shedding. They may be separate looms or mechanisms added to

2279-438: The mills need irrigation, which spreads pests. The 5% of cotton-bearing land in India uses 55% of all pesticides used in India. Cotton picker In many societies, slave labor was utilized to pick the cotton, increasing the plantation owner's profit margins (See Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade ). The first practical cotton picker was invented over a period of years beginning in the late 1920s by John Daniel Rust (1892–1954) with

2332-491: The other finishing processes. At this stage, even the most naturally white cotton fibres are yellowish, and bleaching is required. Bleaching improves whiteness by removing natural colouration and whatever impurities remain in the cotton; the degree of bleaching is determined by the levels of whiteness and absorbency required of the fabric. Cotton, being a vegetable fibre, is bleached using an oxidizing agent , such as diluted sodium hypochlorite or diluted hydrogen peroxide . If

2385-507: The plant at up to six rows at a time. There are two types of pickers in use today. One is the "stripper" picker, primarily found in use in Texas. They are also found in Arkansas. It removes not only the lint from the plant, but a fair deal of the plant matter as well (such as unopened bolls ). Later, the plant matter is separated from the lint through a process dropping heavier matter before

2438-424: The required length of yarn and winds it onto warpers' bobbins. Racks of bobbins are set up to hold the thread while it is wound onto the warp beam of a loom. Because the thread is fine, often three of these would be combined to get the desired number of ends. A sizing machine is needed for strengthening the warp by adding starch, to reduce breakage. The process of drawing each end of the warp separately through

2491-408: The roving is pulled off a bobbin and fed through rollers, which are feeding at several different speeds. This thins the roving at a consistent rate. If the roving was not a consistent size, then this step could cause a break in the yarn, or jam the machine. The yarn is twisted through the spinning of the bobbin as the carriage moves out, and is rolled onto a cylinder called a spindle, which then produces

2544-427: The size that has been used, the cloth may be steeped in a dilute acid and then rinsed, or enzymes may be used to break down the size. Scouring is a chemical washing process carried out on cotton fabric to remove natural waxes and non-fibrous impurities (like the remains of seed fragments) from the fibres and any soiling or dirt that might remain. Scouring is usually carried out in iron vessels called kiers . The fabric

2597-400: The tail of formed yarn that is continually being drawn out of the chamber. Other methods of break spinning use needles and electrostatic forces. This method has replaced the older methods of ring and mule spinning. It is also easily adapted for artificial fibres . The spinning machines takes the roving, thins it and twists it, creating yarn which it winds onto a bobbin. In mule spinning

2650-399: The textile industry. People often use cotton clothing and accessories because of comfort, not limited to different weathers. There are many variable processes available at the spinning and fabric-forming stages coupled with the complexities of the finishing and colouration processes to the production of a wide range of products. Textile manufacturing in the modern era is an evolved form of

2703-431: The thread round and smooth and bright. Only the better qualities of yarn are gassed, like the kinds used for voiles, poplins, venetians, gabardines, Egyptian cottons, etc. The thread loses around 5-8% of its weight if it's gassed. The gassed yarn is darker in shade afterwards, but should not be scorched. The weaving process uses a loom . The lengthwise threads are known as the warp , and the crosswise threads are known as

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2756-541: The worsted-weave shed which is one of the surviving buildings. The complex grew over the years, and was by 1925 one of the largest textile factories in the state. During World War I it supplied large quantities of flannel and wool shirting to the United States Army . The Arlington Mills Company suffered financial reverses during the Great Depression , and closed its doors in 1952. Textile manufacturing Textile manufacturing or textile engineering

2809-412: Was about 1820, when Abiel Stevens built a wood-frame factory in which piano cases were built. Stevens' first mill burned in 1855, and he rebuilt the following year. The Arlington Mills Company began operation in 1865, after purchasing this location; its investors were owners of Lawrence's other mill operations. In 1880 their 1865 building was demolished and replaced by a new brick structure, now termed

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