Industrial weaving: principle and weaving preparation

The weaving process produces woven structures from spools of yarn to fabric. There are two main types of fabric: dobby and Jacquard. On the weaving machine, the difference between them lies in the selection of warp yarns [N 4 608] ; grouped and limited to the number of frames available on the dobby weaving machine, and independent and unlimited according to the number of hooks on the Jacquard weaving machine.

Prior to the manufacture of a fabric woven by the perpendicular interlacing of warp and weft threads on the weaving machine, various steps are required to feed the machine with warp and weft threads . Depending on the orientation of the final fabric (sampling, small and medium production, large production) and its type (dobby or Jacquard fabric), different production processes, involving machines dedicated to these applications, are conceivable.

As a general rule, these production schemes are preferred by the weaver in order to optimize productivity and production costs. However, the diversity of fabric types and the necessary adaptations to be made to manufacturing processes according to the nature and types of yarns used lead to modifications to the proposed schemes in order to ensure the production of the requested woven fabric .

This article describes the various stages involved in the manufacture of machine-woven structures. These are mainly dedicated to the preparation of the warp yarns, from the spools of yarn taken individually to the constitution of a sheet (commonly called the warp) of yarns homogeneous in tension and length and distributed over a given width on the weaving machine. For example, in an extreme case, considering a low warp thread count (silk thread of Nm 150, or 7 tex) coupled with a high warp thread density (of 130 threads per centimeter) and a final fabric width on the weaving machine of 2.40 m, the warp sheet to be produced could contain a total of 31,200 warp threads!

Readers who are not familiar with the manufacture of woven structures, but who have some...