Power loom

Some of the 1200 power looms at the Plevna factory building, completed in 1877, at the Finlayson & Co cotton mills in Tampere, Finland.

A Northrop loom manufactured by Draper Corporation in the textile museum, Lowell, Massachusetts.

The first power loom, a mechanized loom powered by a drive shaft, was designed in 1784 by Edmund Cartwright and first built in 1785, it was refined over the next 47 years till a design by Kenworthy and Bullough, made the operation completely automatic. This was known as the Lancashire Loom By 1850 there were 250,000 machines in operation in England. Fifty years later came the Northrop Loom that would replenish the shuttle when it was empty and this replaced the Lancashire loom.

The Principles of weaving

Shuttle looms

Draper power loom in Lowell, Mass. US

The major components of the loom are the warp beam, heddles, harnesses, shuttle, reed and takeup roll. In the loom, yarn processing includes shedding, picking, battening and taking-up operations.

• Shedding. Shedding is the raising of the warp yarns to form a shed through which the filling yarn, carried by the shuttle, can be inserted. The shed is the vertical space between the raised and unraised warp yarns. On the modern loom, simple and intricate shedding operations are performed automatically by the heddle or heald frame, also known as a harness. This is a rectangular frame to which a series of wires, called heddles or healds, are attached. The yarns are passed through the eye holes of the heddles, which hang vertically from the harnesses. The weave pattern determines which harness controls which warp yarns, and the number of harnesses used depends on the complexity of the weave. Two common methods of controlling the heddles are dobbies and a Jacquard Head.

• Picking. As the harnesses raise the heddles or healds, which raise the warp yarns, the shed is created. The filling yarn in inserted through the shed by a small carrier device called a shuttle. The shuttle is normally pointed at each end to allow passage through the shed. In a traditional shuttle loom, the filling yarn is wound onto a quill, which in turn is mounted in the shuttle. The filling yarn emerges through a hole in the shuttle as it moves across the loom. A single crossing of the shuttle from one side of the loom to the other is known as a pick. As the shuttle moves back and forth across the shed, it weaves an edge, or selvage, on each side of the fabric to prevent the fabric from raveling.

• Battening. As the shuttle moves across the loom laying down the fill yarn, it also passes through openings in another frame called a reed (which resembles a comb). With each picking operation, the reed presses or battens each filling yarn against the portion of the fabric that has already been formed. The point where the fabric is formed is called the fell. Conventional shuttle looms can operate at speeds of about 150 to 160 picks per minute.^[1]

With each weaving operation, the newly constructed fabric must be wound on a cloth beam. This process is called taking up. At the same time, the warp yarns must be let off or released from the warp beams. To become fully automatic, a loom needs a filling stop motion which will brake the loom, if the weft thread breaks. ^[2]

For all this to happen, the yarn has to be prepared. The weft, or filling must be wound tightly on the correct size pirns, quills or bobbins. Weaving happens at great speed so the yarn must be at the correct tension when it leaves the shuttle. The warp passes through the heddles which stretch it at each pick, and through the reeds which are abrasive. The warp is thus sized, that is coated with a mixture that can include china clay and flour, to give it extra strength and to act as a lubricant. It is dressed or wetted while passing through the loom. The warp, hundreds of ends of yarn rolled in parallel, comes on a wooden beam. Before weaving can commence each end must be passed through the heddles and reeds: a process known as looming.^[3]

An automatic loom requires 0.125hp to 0.5hp to operate.

History

A loom from the 1890s with a dobby head. Illustration from the Textile Mercury.

Rev Edmund Cartwright's invention of the power loom, and his modifications to the loom he patented in 1785 was described in his own words.Marsden 1895, p. 64 It was to be forty years before his ideas has been modified into a reliable automatic loom . Cartwright was not the first man to design an automatic loom, this had been done in 1678 by M. de Gennes in Paris, and again by Vaucanson in 1745, but these never developed and were forgotten. Those designs preceded John Kay's invention of the flying shuttle and they passed the shuttle through the shed using levers.

Cartwight's interest in looms was aroused by conversations in Matlock Bath on how to use the surplus yarn that was being spun on the new water frames. His first design, for a vertical loom, was made before he had observed a weaver at work. His second design adopted the handloom frame, and added mechanisms to solve known problems- instead of the warp beam he used a bobbin frame, his loom automatically sized or dressed the warp. There was no take up reel, the clothe was delivered into a box. The slay or lathe was oscillated on primitive swords driven by a rocking rail beneath. There were shedding tappets, and cams to drive the picking. The loom only had one shaft, and the movements would have been irregular and harsh. There was a stop-motion incorporated effected by a swivel plate in the shuttle, which on dropping would engage on a hook in the shed.

It was not a commercially successful machine. His ideas were licensed first by Grimshaw, of Manchester who built a small steam powered weaving factory in Manchester in 1790, the looms had to be stopped to dress the warp. The factory burnt down before anything could be learnt. A series of inventors incrementally improved all aspects of the three principle processes and the ancillary processes.

• Grimshaw 1790 Manchester- dressing the warp
• Austin 1789, 1790 -dressing the warp, 200 looms produced for Monteith of Pollockshaws 1800
• Thomas Johnson, 1803, Bredbury- dressing frame.

Factory for 200 Steam Looms on Manchester 1806

Two factories at Stockport 1809. One at Westhoughton, Lancashire 1809.

• William Radcliffe of Stockport 1802- improved take up mechanism
• John Todd of Burnley 1803- a heald roller and new shedding arrangements, the healds were corded to treadles actuated by cams on the second shaft.
• William Horrocks of Stockport 1803- The frame was still wooden but the lathe was pendant from the frame and operated by cams on the first shaft, the shedding was operated by cams on the second shaft, the take up motion was copied from Radcliffe.
• Peter Marsland 1806- improvements to the lathe motion to counteract poor picking
• William Cotton 1810- improvements to the letting off motion
• William Horrocks 1813 -Horrocks Loom Modifications to the lathe motion- improving on Marsland
• Peter Ewart 1813 -a use of pneumatics
• Joseph and Peter Taylor 1815 -double beat foot lathe for heavy cloths
• Paul Moody 1815- produces the first power loom in North America. Exporting a UK loom would have been illegal.
• William Horrocks 1821 -a system to wet the warp and weft during use, improving the effectiveness of the sizing
• Richard Roberts 1830, Roberts Loom, These improvements were a geared take up wheel and tappets to operate multiple heddles ^[4]
• Stanford, Pritchard and Wilkinson- patented a method to stop on the break of weft or warp. It was not used.
• William Dickinson of Blackburn Blackburn Loom the modern overpick loom

There now appear a series of useful improvements that are contained in patents for useless devices

• Hornby, Kenworthy and Bullough of Blackburn 1834- the vibrating or fly reed
• John Ramsden and Richard Holt of Todmorden 1834- a new automatic weft stopping motion
• James Bullough of Blackburn 1835- improved automatic weft stopping motion and taking up and letting off arrangements
• Andrew Parkinson 1836- improved stretcher (temple).
• William Kenworthy and James Bullough 1841- trough and roller temple (became the standard), A simple stop-motion.

^[5] At this point the loom has become fully automatic. The Cartwight loom weaver could work one loom at 120-130 picks per minute- with a Kenworthy and Bullough's Lancashire Loom, a weaver can run up to six looms working at 220-260 picks per minute- thus giving 12 times more through put. The power loom is now referred to as 'a perfect machine', it produced textile of a better quality than the hand weaver for less cost. An economic success. ^[6] Other improvements were the

• James Bullough 1842 - the loose reed, which doubled the operating speed
• John Sellers 1845 - Burnley Brake, a loom brake
• Blackburn 1852- Dickinson Loom Modern overpick- or side pick using the cone and bowl that substituted the lever pick. Invented in Dickinson's mill.

^[7]

Looms and the Manchester context

The development of the power loom in and around Manchester was not a coincidence. Manchester has been a centre for Fustians by 1620 and acted as a hub for other Lancashire towns, so developing a communication network with them. It was an established point of export using the meandering River Mersey, and by 1800 it had a thriving canal network, with links to the Ashton Canal, Rochdale Canal the Peak Forest Canal and Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal. The fustian trade gave the towns a skilled workforce that was used to the complicated Dutch looms, and were perhaps accustomed to industrial discipline. While Manchester became a spinning town, the towns around were weaving towns producing cloth by the putting out system. The business was dominated by a few families who had the capital needed for the investment in new mills, and buy hundreds of looms. The mills were built along the new canals so immediately had access to their markets. Spinning developed first, and until 1830 the handloom was still more important economically than the power loom when the roles reversed.^[8] Because of the economic growth of Manchester, a new industry of precision machine tool engineering was born and here were the skills needed to build the precision mechanisms of a loom.

Adoption

^[9]

American contributions

Francis Cabot Lowell traveled to Great Britain from the United States in 1810 to study the textile industry there. He paid particular attention to the workings of the power loom, a device for which was not available in North America. He memorised the plans for the machine, as the British had banned the export of the new technology. On returning to Boston, he put together a group of investors, and sought the assistance of a master mechanic named Paul Moody. By 1815, Moody had built the first power loom in Waltham, Massachusetts. ^[10]

In 1881 James Henry Northrop emigrated to the USA from Keighley, Yorkshire, England he worked for the Draper Corporation of Hopedale, Massachusetts. His inventions leading to an automatic "weft replenishment" loom revolutionised the weaving industry. Some 700,000 "Northrop" automatic looms were sold worldwide.

Draper's strategy was to standardise on a couple of models which it mass produced. The lighter E-model of 1909 was joined in the 1930 by the heavier X-model. Continuous fibre machines, say for rayon, which was more break-prone, needed a specialist loom. This was provided by the purchase of the Stafford Loom Co. in 1932, and using their patents a third loom the XD, was added to the range. Because of their mass production techniques they were reluctant and slow to retool for new technologies such as shuttleless looms. ^[11]

Decline and reinvention

Originally, power looms used a shuttle to throw the weft across, but in 1927 the faster and more efficient shuttleless loom came into use. Sulzer Brothers, a Swiss company had the exclusive rights to manufacture shuttleless looms in 1942, and licensed the American production to Warner & Swasey. Draper licensed the slower rapier loom. Today, advances in technology have produced a variety of looms designed to maximise production for specific types of material. The most common of these are Sulzer shuttleless weaving machines, rapier looms, air-jet looms and water-jet looms.^[12]

Social and economic implications

This section requires expansion.

See also

• Jacquard Loom
• Dobby loom
• Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution
• Paul Moody
• Northrop Loom

References

Bibliography

• Collier, Ann M (1970). A Handbook of Textiles. Pergamon Press. pp. 258. ISBN 0 08 018057 4, 0 08 018056 6. 
• Hills, Richard Leslie (1993). Power from Steam: A History of the Stationary Steam Engine. Cambridge University Press,. pp. 244. ISBN ISBN 052145834X, 9780521458344. http://books.google.com/books?id=t6TLOQBhd0YC. Retrieved January 2009. 
• Marsden, Richard (1895) (in English). Cotton Weaving: Its Development, Principles, and Practice. George Bell & Sons. pp. 584. http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/books.html. Retrieved Feb 2009. 
• Mass, William (1990). "[www.h-net.org/~business/bhcweb/publications/BEHprint/v019/p0234-p0244.pdf The Decline of a Technology Leader:Capabilty, strategy and shuttleless Weaving]". Business and Economic History. ISSN 089-6825. www.h-net.org/~business/bhcweb/publications/BEHprint/v019/p0234-p0244.pdf. 
• Miller, I; Wild (2007). Rachel Newman. ed. A& G Murray and the Cotton Mills of Ancoats. Meeting House Lane, Lancaster: Oxford Archeology North. ISBN 978-0-904220-46-7. 

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