The Hairiness of Cotton Yarns: An Improvement over the Existing Microscopic Technique1

The hairiness of cotton yarns made from three different cottons with varying staple length and fineness and spun under varying spinning conditions has been studied. The parameter adopted to characterize the hairiness of yarns was N1L1—the cumulative protruding length in 1-mm length of yarn. A new technique—a yarn-clamping and -rotating device—was used to count the number of protruding ends N1, and measure the corresponding protruding lengths L1. This technique helps to count the fiber ends more accurately than other methods. The technique involves rotating the yarn and thus bringing the fiber end projecting into a plane perpendicular to the screen and also exposing the actual protruding length of the fiber in the plane of the screen. This device thus overcomes the possibility of a fiber being excluded from the count, which would otherwise be hidden by the yarn shadow and by the tangled appearance of the yarn edges. The results obtained have been found to be fairly accurate and reproducible and agree with the subjective judgment of hairiness of yarns.