Carding

For other uses, see Carding (disambiguation).
Dyed wool being carded with a 1949 Tatham carding machine at Jamieson Mill, Sandness, Shetland, Scotland
Cotton carder (known as dhunuri or lep wallah) in Howrah, Kolkata, India
William Tatham Breaker carder.

In textile production, carding is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibres to produce a continuous web or sliver suitable for subsequent processing.[1] This is achieved by passing the fibres between differentially moving surfaces covered with "card clothing", a firm flexible material embedded with metal pins. It breaks up locks and unorganised clumps of fibre and then aligns the individual fibres to be parallel with each other. In preparing wool fibre for spinning, carding is the step that comes after teasing.[2]

The word is derived from the Latin Carduus meaning thistle or teasel,[3] as dried vegetable teasels were first used to comb the raw wool before technological advances led to the use of machines.

  1. ^ Yilmaz, Nasire Deniz; Powell (2005). "The Technology of Terry Towel production" (PDF). Journal of Textile and Apparel, Technology and Management. 4 (4). North Carolina Stare University.
  2. ^ "Preparing Wool for Handspinning". La Hottée. 27 July 2007. Archived from the original on 2014-08-22. Retrieved 2014-09-16.
  3. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Carding" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.