Fibre Opening
Opening refers to mechanical separation of fibres from another one. The opening is gradually carried out gradually in steps. In the first step the bale of fibre is broken down in to small tufts then later on at various stages of spinning these tufts are further broken down in to individual fibres. The raw fibres for easy transportation are highly compressed in to bundles called as bales. Before effective spinning can be carried out, this compressed form of fibres must be separated from one another.
Bale Opening Machines
Zone1-After proper bale lay-down the initial bale feeding is done either by using a parallel set of machines called as hopper feeder or by single machine called as a top feeder. The hopper feeders have stock supply compartments which are either filled manually or by automatic machines. Hopper feeders are conventional types of bale opener. They remains stationary while the raw fibres from the bales can be fed manually or by automatic machines. Nowadays the most popular and modern machine for feeding raw fibres from bale is the top feeder like Reiter Unifloc Top Feeder.
The top feeders are traveling machines that move over and past the bale layout and extract fibres from top to bottom.They have great advantage that more than one bale can be processed simultaneously to give a better long term blend.These machines are fitted with computerized control panels and they extract material from all the bales evenly.The production rate of such modern bale openers ranges from 750 kg/hour to 1000 kg/hour.The hopper feeders and top feeders should perform the following functions:
- Extract material evenly form bales
- Open material gently
- Open up to smallest tufts
- Form tufts of equal sizes
- Process as many as possible in a single charge
- Easily programmable
- Blend fibres at the start of the process.