87-559: Detroit Arsenal ( DTA ), formerly Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant ( DATP ) was the first manufacturing plant ever built for the mass production of tanks in the United States. Established in 1940 under Chrysler , the plant was owned by the U.S. government until 1996. It was designed by architect Albert Kahn . The building was designed originally as a "dual production facility", so that it could make armaments and be turned into peaceful production at war's end. Notwithstanding its name,
174-409: A bobbin lasted two days but on fine count it could last for 3 weeks. To creel, the creeler stood behind the mule, placing new bobbins on the shelf above the creel. As the bobbin ran empty he would pick it off its skewer in the creel unreeling 30 cm or so of roving, and drop it into a skip. With his left hand, he would place on the new bobbin onto the skewer from above and with his right hand twist in
261-424: A brush on the roller beam, and run bent double the entire length of the mule, avoiding the rails and draw bands, and not letting themselves touch the yarn sheet. When they had finished they would run to agreed positions of safety where the minder could see both of them, and the minder would unclip the stang and start the mule. Before this ritual was devised, boys had been crushed. The mule was 130 feet (40 m) long,
348-412: A building or set of buildings where large amounts of goods are made using machines elsewhere: ... the utilization of machines presupposes social cooperation and the division of labour The first machine is stated by one source to have been traps used to assist with the capturing of animals, corresponding to the machine as a mechanism operating independently or with very little force by interaction from
435-411: A consistent thread; a self-acting mule would need: A counter faller under the thread was made to rise to take in the slack caused by backing off. This could be used with the top faller wire to guide the yarn to the correct place on the cop. These were controlled by levers and cams and an inclined plane called the shaper. The spindle speed was controlled by a drum and weighted ropes, as the headstock moved
522-502: A critical part of modern economic production , with the majority of the world's goods being created or processed within factories. Factories arose with the introduction of machinery during the Industrial Revolution , when the capital and space requirements became too great for cottage industry or workshops. Early factories that contained small amounts of machinery, such as one or two spinning mules , and fewer than
609-481: A date for cooperation and factors of demand, by an increased community size and population to make something like factory level production a conceivable necessity. Archaeologist Bonnet, unearthed the foundations of numerous workshops in the city of Kerma proving that as early as 2000 BC Kerma was a large urban capital. The watermill was first made in the Persian Empire some time before 350 BC. In
696-413: A dozen workers have been called "glorified workshops". Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production. Large factories tend to be located with access to multiple modes of transportation, some having rail , highway and water loading and unloading facilities. In some countries like Australia, it is common to call
783-835: A factory building a " Shed ". Factories may either make discrete products or some type of continuously produced material, such as chemicals , pulp and paper , or refined oil products . Factories manufacturing chemicals are often called plants and may have most of their equipment – tanks , pressure vessels , chemical reactors , pumps and piping – outdoors and operated from control rooms . Oil refineries have most of their equipment outdoors. Discrete products may be final goods , or parts and sub-assemblies which are made into final products elsewhere. Factories may be supplied parts from elsewhere or make them from raw materials . Continuous production industries typically use heat or electricity to transform streams of raw materials into finished products. The term mill originally referred to
870-436: A few minutes, the piecers would run the length of the mule gate thrutching five spindles a time, and the doffing involved lifting four cops from the spindles with the right hand and piling them on the left forearm and hand. To get a firm cop bottom, the minder would whip the first few layers of yarn. After the first few draws the minder would stop the mule at the start of an inward run and take it in slowly depressing and releasing
957-473: A great expansion at about the same time, which can be used to identify the start of the Industrial Revolution. The 1790 mule was operated by brute force: the spinner drawing and pushing the frame while attending to each spindle. Home spinning was the occupation of women and girls, but the strength needed to operate a mule caused it to be the activity of men. Hand loom weaving, however, had been
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#17327807382021044-409: A heck (an apparatus that guides the thread to the reels) in a continuous process. These two wheels became the starting point of technological development. Businessmen such as Richard Arkwright employed inventors to find solutions that would increase the amount of yarn spun, then took out the relevant patents. The spinning jenny allowed a group of eight spindles to be operated together. It mirrored
1131-425: A human, with a capacity for use repeatedly with operation exactly the same on every occasion of functioning. The wheel was invented c. 3000 BC , the spoked wheel c. 2000 BC . The Iron Age began approximately 1200–1000 BC. However, other sources define machinery as a means of production. Archaeology provides a date for the earliest city as 5000 BC as Tell Brak (Ur et al. 2006), therefore
1218-415: A man's occupation but in the mill it could and was done by girls and women. Spinners were the bare-foot aristocrats of the factory system. It replaced decentralised cottage industries with centralised factory jobs, driving economic upheaval and urbanisation . Mule spinners were the leaders in unionism within the cotton industry; the pressure to develop the self-actor or self-acting mule was partly to open
1305-412: A mechanic from Horwich , constructed a mule using toothed gearing and, importantly, metal rollers. Baker of Bury worked on drums, and Hargreaves used parallel scrolling to achieve smoother acceleration and deceleration. In 1790, William Kelly of Glasgow used a new method to assist the draw stroke. First animals, and then water, was used as the prime mover. Wright of Manchester moved the headstock to
1392-414: A minute for 56 hours a week. Before the 1770s, textile production was a cottage industry using flax and wool . Weaving was a family activity. The children and women would card the fibre – break up and clean the disorganised fluff into long bundles. The women would then spin these rough rovings into yarn wound onto a spindle . The male weaver would use a frame loom to weave this into cloth. This
1479-542: A minute. It was invented between 1775 and 1779 by Samuel Crompton . The self-acting (automatic) mule was patented by Richard Roberts in 1825. At its peak, there were 5,000,000 mule spindles in Lancashire alone. Modern versions are still in production and are used to spin woollen yarns from noble fibres such as cashmere , ultra-fine merino and alpaca for the knitted textile market. The spinning mule spins textile fibres into yarn by an intermittent process. In
1566-535: A more contemporary approach to handle design applicable to manufacturing facilities can be found in Socio-Technical Systems (STS) . In Britain, a shadow factory is one of a number of manufacturing sites built in dispersed locations in times of war to reduce the risk of disruption due to enemy air-raids and often with the dual purpose of increasing manufacturing capacity. Before World War II Britain had built many shadow factories . Production of
1653-641: A rate sufficient to meet the needs of 80,000 persons, in the Roman Empire. The large population increase in medieval Islamic cities, such as Baghdad 's 1.5 million population, led to the development of large-scale factory milling installations with higher productivity to feed and support the large growing population. A tenth-century grain-processing factory in the Egyptian town of Bilbays , for example, milled an estimated 300 tons of grain and flour per day. Both watermills and windmills were widely used in
1740-600: A reinforced roof with slats to direct bombs away from vulnerable windows and exhaust fans. The portion of the property not sold to the city remains an active Army facility with many agencies present. The installation is managed by Installation Management Command (IMCOM) and hosts the headquarters of the United States Army CCDC Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC), formerly United States Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC), and it hosts
1827-442: Is a machine used to spin cotton and other fibres. They were used extensively from the late 18th to the early 20th century in the mills of Lancashire and elsewhere. Mules were worked in pairs by a minder, with the help of two boys: the little piecer and the big or side piecer. The carriage carried up to 1,320 spindles and could be 150 feet (46 m) long, and would move forward and back a distance of 5 feet (1.5 m) four times
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#17327807382021914-443: Is completed. The carriage commences to run inwards; that is, towards the rollerbeam. This is called putting up. The spindles wind on the yarn at a uniform rate. The speed of revolution of the spindle must vary, as the faller is guiding the thread upon the larger or smaller diameter of the cone of the cop. Immediately the winding is finished, the depressed faller rises, the counter-faller is put down. These movements are repeated until
2001-466: The Fine Spinners & Doublers Association . In 1793, John Kennedy addressed the problem of fine counts. With these counts, the spindles on the return traverse needed to rotate faster than on the outward traverse. He attached gears and a clutch to implement this motion. William Eaton, in 1818, improved the winding of the thread by using two faller wires and performing a backing off at the end of
2088-542: The Luddite riots. The preparatory and associated tasks allowed many children to be employed until this was regulated. Development over the next century and a half led to an automatic mule and to finer and stronger yarn. The ring frame , originating in New England in the 1820s, was little used in Lancashire until the 1890s. It required more energy and could not produce the finest counts. Samuel Crompton invented
2175-496: The Supermarine Spitfire at its parent company's base at Woolston, Southampton was vulnerable to enemy attack as a high-profile target and was well within range of Luftwaffe bombers. Indeed, on 26 September 1940 this facility was completely destroyed by an enemy bombing raid. Supermarine had already established a plant at Castle Bromwich ; this action prompted them to further disperse Spitfire production around
2262-682: The United States Army TACOM Life Cycle Management Command . TACOM continues to function at the location, and experienced a major building boom in the 2010s. 42°29′49″N 83°02′30″W / 42.49694°N 83.04167°W / 42.49694; -83.04167 Manufacturing plant A factory , manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery , where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. They are
2349-444: The factory system ) developed in the cotton and wool textiles industry. Later generations of factories included mechanized shoe production and manufacturing of machinery, including machine tools. After this came factories that supplied the railroad industry included rolling mills, foundries and locomotive works, along with agricultural-equipment factories that produced cast-steel plows and reapers. Bicycles were mass-produced beginning in
2436-484: The milling of grain , which usually used natural resources such as water or wind power until those were displaced by steam power in the 19th century. Because many processes like spinning and weaving, iron rolling , and paper manufacturing were originally powered by water, the term survives as in steel mill , paper mill , etc. Max Weber considered production during ancient and medieval times as never warranting classification as factories, with methods of production and
2523-404: The spinning mule in 1779, so called because it is a hybrid of Arkwright's water frame and James Hargreaves 's spinning jenny in the same way that a mule is the product of crossbreeding a female horse with a male donkey . The spinning mule has a fixed frame with a creel of cylindrical bobbins to hold the roving, connected through the headstock to a parallel carriage with the spindles. On
2610-550: The 113-acre (0.46 km) site was located in Warren, Michigan , Detroit's most populous suburb. Chrysler's construction effort at the plant in 1941 was one of the fastest on record. The first tanks rumbled out of the plant before its complete construction. During World War II , the Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant built a quarter of the 89,568 tanks produced in the U.S. overall. The plant made M3 Lee tanks while
2697-451: The 1880s. The Nasmyth, Gaskell and Company's Bridgewater Foundry , which began operation in 1836, was one of the earliest factories to use modern materials handling such as cranes and rail tracks through the buildings for handling heavy items. Large scale electrification of factories began around 1900 after the development of the AC motor which was able to run at constant speed depending on
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2784-500: The 20th century additional mechanisms were added to make the motion more gentle, leading to mules that used two or even three driving speeds. Fine counts needed a softer action on the winding, and relied on manual adjustment to wind the chase or top of the perfect cop. Spinning wool is a different process as the variable lengths of the individual fibres means that they are unsuitable for attenuation by roller drafting. For this reason, woolen fibres are carded using condenser cards which rub
2871-505: The City of Warren in 2001. The site of the original tank plant has been parcelled up and is now dedicated to civilian uses. This important production site of the Arsenal of Democracy is memorialized by a Michigan Historical Marker. The structure of the plant was designed to survive bombardment by the weapons of the day. It included 3-foot-thick (0.91 m) concrete walls in some areas and
2958-450: The Egyptian pharaoh, with slave employment and no differentiation of skills within the slave group comparable to modern definitions as division of labour . According to translations of Demosthenes and Herodotus, Naucratis was a, or the only, factory in the entirety of ancient Egypt . A source of 1983 (Hopkins), states the largest factory production in ancient times was of 120 slaves within fourth century BC Athens. An article within
3045-549: The Islamic world at the time. The Venice Arsenal also provides one of the first examples of a factory in the modern sense of the word. Founded in 1104 in Venice , Republic of Venice , several hundred years before the Industrial Revolution , it mass-produced ships on assembly lines using manufactured parts . The Venice Arsenal apparently produced nearly one ship every day and, at its height, employed 16,000 people. One of
3132-472: The New York Times article dated 13 October 2011 states: "In African Cave, Signs of an Ancient Paint Factory" – (John Noble Wilford) ... discovered at Blombos Cave , a cave on the south coast of South Africa where 100,000-year-old tools and ingredients were found with which early modern humans mixed an ochre -based paint . Although The Cambridge Online Dictionary definition of factory states:
3219-399: The area. The factory system was a new way of organizing workforce made necessary by the development of machines which were too large to house in a worker's cottage. Working hours were as long as they had been for the farmer, that is, from dawn to dusk, six days per week. Overall, this practice essentially reduced skilled and unskilled workers to replaceable commodities. Arkwright's factory was
3306-454: The bare spindle below. A few turns are wound onto the spindle, to fix the threads to the bare spindles for a new set. The cops are removed and collected into cans or baskets, and subsequently delivered to the warehouse. The remainder of the "draw" or "stretch," as the length of spun yarn is called when the carriage is out, is then wound upon the spindles as the carriage is run up to the roller beam. Work then commences anew. The doffing took only
3393-412: The blowing room delivered by a bobbin carrier who was part of the carder's staff, and yarn was hoisted down to the warehouse by the warehouseman's staff. Delineation of jobs was rigid and communication would be through the means of coloured slips of paper written on in indelible pencil. Creeling involved replacing the rovings bobbins in a section of the mule without stopping the mule. On very coarse counts
3480-426: The buildings were still being raised and switched to M4 Sherman tanks in 1942. The Korean War boosted production for the first time since World War II had ended; the government would suspend tank production after each war. In May 1952, Chrysler resumed control from the army, which had been unable to ramp up production. As a government-owned, contractor operated (GOCO) facility, Chrysler retained operational control of
3567-399: The carded fibres together rather than drafting them. They are then spun on mule-type machines which have no roller drafting, but create the draft by the spindles receding from the delivery rollers whilst that latter, having paid out a short length of roving, are held stationary. Such mules are often complex involving multiple spindles speeds, receding motions, etc. to ensure optimum treatment of
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3654-600: The centre of the machine, allowing twice as many spindles; a squaring band was added to ensure the spindles came out in a straight line. He was in conversation with John Kennedy about the possibility of a self-acting mule. Kennedy, a partner in McConnell & Kennedy machine makers in Ancoats , was concerned with building ever larger mules. McConnell & Kennedy ventured into spinning when they were left with two unpaid-for mules; their firm prospered and eventually merged into
3741-408: The contemporary economic situation incomparable to modern or even pre-modern developments of industry. In ancient times, the earliest production limited to the household, developed into a separate endeavor independent to the place of inhabitation with production at that time only beginning to be characteristic of industry, termed as "unfree shop industry", a situation caused especially under the reign of
3828-409: The cops on each spindle are perfectly formed: the set is completed. A stop-motion paralyses every action of the machine, rendering it necessary to doff or strip the spindles, and to commence anew. Doffing is performed by the piercers thrutching, that is raising, the cops partially up the spindles, whilst the carriage is out. The minder then depressing the faller, so far as to guide the threads upon
3915-720: The country with many premises being requisitioned by the British Government. Connected to the Spitfire was production of its equally important Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, Rolls-Royce 's main aero engine facility was located at Derby , the need for increased output was met by building new factories in Crewe and Glasgow and using a purpose-built factory of Ford of Britain in Trafford Park Manchester . Spinning mule The spinning mule
4002-412: The drafting rollers, drawing them through the 1 + 1 ⁄ 4 -inch (3.2 cm) gap between two ends, stripping them of fly and replacing them on the next inward run. Cleaning the carriage top was far more dangerous. The minder would stop the mule on the outward run, and raise his hands above his head. The piecers would enter under the yarn sheet with a scavenger cloth on the carriage spindle rail and
4089-497: The draw stroke, the roving is pulled through rollers and twisted; on the return it is wrapped onto the spindle. Its rival, the throstle frame or ring frame , uses a continuous process, where the roving is drawn, twisted and wrapped in one action. The mule was the most common spinning machine from 1790 until about 1900 and was still used for fine yarns until the early 1980s. In 1890, a typical cotton mill would have over 60 mules, each with 1,320 spindles, which would operate four times
4176-534: The earliest factories was John Lombe 's water-powered silk mill at Derby , operational by 1721. By 1746, an integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near Bristol . Raw material went in at one end, was smelted into brass and was turned into pans, pins, wire, and other goods. Housing was provided for workers on site. Josiah Wedgwood in Staffordshire and Matthew Boulton at his Soho Manufactory were other prominent early industrialists, who employed
4263-455: The expiry of the patent other firms took forward the development, and the mule was adapted for the counts it spun. Initially Roberts' self-actor was used for coarse counts (Oldham Counts), but the mule-jenny continued to be used for the very finest counts (Bolton counts) until the 1890s and beyond. Bolton specialised in fine count cotton, and its mules ran more slowly to put in the extra twist. The mule jenny allowed for this gentler action but in
4350-566: The factory concept in the early 20th century, with the innovation of the mass production . Highly specialized laborers situated alongside a series of rolling ramps would build up a product such as (in Ford's case) an automobile . This concept dramatically decreased production costs for virtually all manufactured goods and brought about the age of consumerism . In the mid - to late 20th century, industrialized countries introduced next-generation factories with two improvements: Some speculation as to
4437-467: The factory system. The factory system began widespread use somewhat later when cotton spinning was mechanized. Richard Arkwright is the person credited with inventing the prototype of the modern factory. After he patented his water frame in 1769, he established Cromford Mill , in Derbyshire , England, significantly expanding the village of Cromford to accommodate the migrant workers new to
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#17327807382024524-448: The faller wire several times. Alternatively, a starch paste could be skilfully applied to the first few layers of yarn by the piecers – and later a small paper tube was dropped over spindle – this slowed down the doffing operation and extra payment was negotiated by the minders. A pair of mules would be manned by a person called the minder and two boys called the side piecer and the little piecer. They worked barefoot in humid temperatures;
4611-427: The first successful cotton spinning factory in the world; it showed unequivocally the way ahead for industry and was widely copied. Between 1770 and 1850 mechanized factories supplanted traditional artisan shops as the predominant form of manufacturing institution, because the larger-scale factories enjoyed a significant technological and supervision advantage over the small artisan shops. The earliest factories (using
4698-458: The focus of labour, in general, shifted to central-city office towers or to semi-rural campus-style establishments, and many factories stood deserted in local rust belts . The next blow to the traditional factories came from globalization . Manufacturing processes (or their logical successors, assembly plants) in the late 20th century re-focussed in many instances on Special Economic Zones in developing countries or on maquiladoras just across
4785-429: The form of a kind of "laboratory factories", with management models that allow "producing with quality while experimenting to do it better tomorrow". Before the advent of mass transportation , factories' needs for ever-greater concentrations of labourers meant that they typically grew up in an urban setting or fostered their own urbanization . Industrial slums developed, and reinforced their own development through
4872-528: The frame. Both the rollers and the outward motion of the carriage remove irregularities from the rove before it is wound on the spindle. When Arkwright's patents expired, the mule was developed by several manufacturers. Crompton's first mule had 48 spindles and could produce 1 pound (0.45 kg) of 60s thread a day. This demanded a spindle speed of 1,700 rpm, and a power input of 1 ⁄ 16 horsepower (47 W). The mule produced strong, thin yarn , suitable for any kind of textile , warp or weft. It
4959-458: The future of the factory includes scenarios with rapid prototyping , nanotechnology , and orbital zero- gravity facilities. There is some scepticism about the development of the factories of the future if the robotic industry is not matched by a higher technological level of the people who operate it. According to some authors, the four basic pillars of the factories of the future are strategy, technology, people and habitability, which would take
5046-510: The interactions between factories, as when one factory's output or waste-product became the raw materials of another factory (preferably nearby). Canals and railways grew as factories spread, each clustering around sources of cheap energy, available materials and/or mass markets. The exception proved the rule: even greenfield factory sites such as Bournville , founded in a rural setting, developed their own housing and profited from convenient communications systems. Regulation curbed some of
5133-404: The minder and the little piecer worked the minder half of the mule. The minder would make minor adjustments to his mules to the extent that each mule worked differently. They were specialists in spinning, and were answerable only to the gaffer and under-gaffer who were in charge of the floor and with it the quantity and quality of the yarn that was produced. Bobbins of rovings came from the carder in
5220-419: The minder's eyesight might not have been good, the air in the mill was clouded with fly and another minder's boys might have been mistaken for his. The ritual became encoded in law. The spinning inventions were significant in enabling a great expansion to occur in the production of textiles, particularly cotton ones. Cotton and iron were leading sectors in the Industrial Revolution . Both industries underwent
5307-486: The multiple rollers required much more energy input and demanded that the device be driven by a water wheel. The early water frame, however, had only a single spindle. Combining ideas from these two system inspired the spinning mule . The increased supply of muslin inspired developments in loom design such as Edmund Cartwright 's power loom . Some spinners and handloom weavers opposed the perceived threat to their livelihood: there were frame-breaking riots and, in 1811–13,
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#17327807382025394-465: The national boundaries of industrialized states. Further re-location to the least industrialized nations appears possible as the benefits of out-sourcing and the lessons of flexible location apply in the future. Much of management theory developed in response to the need to control factory processes. Assumptions on the hierarchies of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled laborers and their supervisors and managers still linger on; however an example of
5481-410: The new roving into the tail of the last. Piecing involved repairing sporadic yarn breakages. At the rollers, the broken yarn would be caught on the underclearer (or fluker rod on Bolton mules), while at the spindle it would knot itself into a whorl on the spindle tip. If the break happened on the winding stroke the spindle might have to be stopped while the thread was found. The number of yarn breakages
5568-471: The newly spun yarn is wound onto the spindle in the form of a cone-shaped cop. As the mule spindle travels on its carriage, the roving which it spins is fed to it through rollers geared to revolve at different speeds to draw out the yarn. Marsden in 1885 described the processes of setting up and operating a mule. Here is his description, edited slightly. The creel holds bobbins containing rovings . The rovings are passed through small guide-wires, and between
5655-429: The number of poles and the current electrical frequency. At first larger motors were added to line shafts , but as soon as small horsepower motors became widely available, factories switched to unit drive. Eliminating line shafts freed factories of layout constraints and allowed factory layout to be more efficient. Electrification enabled sequential automation using relay logic . Henry Ford further revolutionized
5742-417: The outward motion, the rovings are paid out through attenuating rollers and twisted. On the return, the roving is clamped and the spindles are reversed to take up the newly spun thread. Crompton built his mule from wood. Although he used Hargreaves' ideas of spinning multiple threads and of attenuating the roving with rollers, it was he who put the spindles on the carriage and fixed a creel of roving bobbins on
5829-527: The outward traverse. All these mules had been worked by the strength of the operatives. The next improvement was a fully automatic mule. Richard Roberts took out his first patent in 1825 and a second in 1830. The task he had set himself was to design a self-actor, a self-acting or automatic spinning mule. Roberts is also known for the Roberts Loom , which was widely adopted because of its reliability. The mule in 1820 still needed manual assistance to spin
5916-574: The production facility until March 1982, when Chrysler sold its Chrysler Defense division to General Dynamics Land Systems . General Dynamics produced the M1 Abrams tank at the facility (and at another plant in Lima, Ohio ) until 1996, when the plant was closed and tank assembly and maintenance operations were consolidated at the Lima plant. The plant and some of the adjoining property were transferred to
6003-446: The ropes twisted the drum, which using a tooth wheel turned the spindles. None of this would have been possible using the technology of Crompton's time, fifty years earlier. With the invention of the self actor, the hand-operated mule was increasingly referred to as a mule-jenny. Oldham counts refers to the medium thickness cotton that was used for general purpose cloth. Roberts did not profit from his self-acting spinning mule, but on
6090-405: The side-to-side weft does not have to be stretched on a loom in the way that the warp is, it can generally be less strong.) The throstle and the later water frame pulled the rovings through a set of attenuating rollers. Spinning at differing speeds, these pulled the thread continuously while other parts twisted it as it wound onto the heavy spindles. This produced thread suitable for warp, but
6177-413: The simple wheel; the rovings were clamped, and a frame moved forward stretching and thinning the roving. A wheel was rapidly turned as the frame was pushed back, and the spindles rotated, twisting the rovings into yarn and collecting it on the spindles. The spinning jenny was effective and could be operated by hand, but it produced weaker thread that could be used only for the weft part of the cloth. (Because
6264-401: The spindle, and, as it approaches the tenuity of the remainder, it receives the twist it had hitherto refused to take. The carriage, which is borne upon wheels, continues its outward progress, until it reaches the extremity of its traverse, which is 63 inches (160 cm) from the roller beam. The revolution of the spindles cease, the drawing rollers stop. Backing-off commences. This process is
6351-401: The spindles, revolving at a rate of 6,000–9,000 rpm twist the hitherto loose fibres together, thus forming a thread. Whilst this is going on, the spindle carriage is being drawn away from the rollers, at a pace very slightly exceeding the rate at which the roving is coming forth. This is called the gain of the carriage, its purpose being to eliminate all irregularities in the fineness of
6438-466: The third century BC, Philo of Byzantium describes a water-driven wheel in his technical treatises. Factories producing garum were common in the Roman Empire . The Barbegal aqueduct and mills are an industrial complex from the second century AD found in southern France. By the time of the fourth century AD, there was a water-milling installation with a capacity to grind 28 tons of grain per day,
6525-402: The thread. Should a thick place in the roving come through the rollers, it would resist the efforts of the spindle to twist it; and, if passed in this condition, it would seriously deteriorate the quality of the yarn, and impede subsequent operations. As, however, the twist, spreading itself over the level thread, gives firmness to this portion, the thick and untwisted part yields to the draught of
6612-404: The threads on the spindles, by simply placing the threads in contact with the un-twisted roving. The different parts of the machine are next simultaneously started, when the whole works in harmony together. The back rollers pull the sliver from the bobbins, and passing it to the succeeding pairs, whose differential speeds attenuate it to the required degree of fineness. As it is delivered in front,
6699-426: The three pairs of drawing-rollers. Connection is then established between the attenuated rovings and the spindles. When the latter are bare, as in a new mule, the spindle-driving motion is put into gear, and the attendants wind upon each spindle a short length of yarn from a cop held in the hand. The drawing-roller motion is placed in gear, and the rollers soon present lengths of attenuated roving. These are attached to
6786-450: The thumb. Doffing has already been described. Cleaning was important and until a formal ritual had been devised it was a dangerous operation. The vibration in a mule threw a lot of short fibres (or fly) into the air. It tended to accumulate on the carriage behind the spindles and in the region of the drafting rollers. Piking the stick meant placing the hand though the yarnsheet, and unclipping two sticks of underclearer rollers from beneath
6873-407: The trade to women. It was in 1870 that the first national union was formed. The wool industry was divided into woollen and worsted . It lagged behind cotton in adopting new technology. Worsted tended to adopt Arkwright water frames which could be operated by young girls, and woollen adopted the mule. Circa 1900 there was a high incidence of scrotal cancer detected in former mule spinners. It
6960-410: The unwinding of the several turns of the yarn, extending from the top of the cop in process of formation to the summit of the spindle. As this proceeds, the faller- wire, which is placed over and guides the threads upon the cop, is depressed ; the counter-faller at the same time rising, the slack unwound from the spindles is taken up, and the threads are prevented from running into snarls. Backing-off
7047-523: The worst excesses of industrialization 's factory-based society, labourers of Factory Acts leading the way in Britain. Trams , automobiles and town planning encouraged the separate development of industrial suburbs and residential suburbs, with labourers commuting between them. Though factories dominated the Industrial Era, the growth in the service sector eventually began to dethrone them:
7134-423: The yarn. Condenser spinning was developed to enable the short fibres produced as waste from the combing of fine cottons, to be spun into a soft, coarse yarns suitable for sheeting, blankets etc. Only approximately 2% of the mule spindles in Lancashire were Condenser spindles, but many more Condenser mules survive today as these were the last spindles regularly at work., and the mules are similar. Helmshore Mills
7221-414: Was a cotton waste mule spinning mill. Mules are still in use for spinning woolen and alpaca, and being produced across the world. In Italy for example by Bigagli and Cormatex Mule spindles rest on a carriage that travels on a track a distance of 60 inches (1.5 m), while drawing out and spinning the yarn. On the return trip, known as putting up, as the carriage moves back to its original position,
7308-407: Was dependent on the quality of the roving, and quality cotton led to fewer breakages. Typical 1,200 spindle mules of the 1920s would experience 5 to 6 breakages a minute. The two piecers would thus need to repair the thread within 15 to 20 seconds while the mule was in motion but once they had the thread it took under three seconds. The repair actually involved a slight rolling of the forefinger against
7395-399: Was first used to spin cotton, then other fibres. Samuel Crompton could not afford to patent his invention. He sold the rights to David Dale and returned to weaving. Dale patented the mule and profited from it. Crompton's machine was largely built of wood, using bands and pulleys for the driving motions. After his machine was public, he had little to do with its development. Henry Stones,
7482-409: Was limited to cotton mule spinners and did not affect woollen or condenser mule spinners. The cause was attributed to the blend of vegetable and mineral oils used to lubricate the spindles. The spindles, when running, threw out a mist of oil at crotch height, that was captured by the clothing of anyone piecing an end. In the 1920s much attention was given to this problem. Mules had used this mixture since
7569-411: Was then tentered in the sun to bleach it. The invention by John Kay of the flying shuttle made the loom twice as productive, causing the demand for cotton yarn to vastly exceed what traditional spinners could supply. There were two types of spinning wheel: the simple wheel , which uses an intermittent process, and the more refined Saxony wheel, which drives a differential spindle and flyer with
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