The present invention refers to a device and a process for unwinding yarn from cops or spools for feeding to machines for preparing yarn, and in particular to automatic winding machines, removing its defective end portions.
In order to highlight both the technical problems tackled and solved by the present invention and its characteristics and advantages with respect to the prior art, it shall be described with reference to its fundamental points in the winding process in an automatic winder.
As is known, automatic winders consist of a plurality of winding stations or units lined up along the front of the machine equipped with common service apparatus to feed them with full spools and to discharge them as empty tubes to be recycled.
The winding unit is illustrated in its essential components in
The suction nozzle 9 sucking from the side of the spool is susceptible to the angular movement α which first carries its suction nozzle to capturing the end of the yarn 2 from the unwind group, and then being lifted from it with the rotation α, holding the end of the spool side and taking it to the yarn-splicer 6. The suction nozzle 10 sucking from the side of the package, on the other hand, is susceptible to the angular movement β which takes its suction nozzle first to capturing the end of the yarn 2 from the package 12 and then lowering with the rotation β to take the end on the package side to the yarn-splicer 6. Such a yarn-splicer then proceeds to operate the joining after having received the two ends, having cut them to size, sucking in the waste in the suction nozzles 9 and 10, and having lined them up correctly. The yarn-splicer, after having restored its continuity, releases the yarn to go back to its winding configuration from spool to package.
The winding process, in its basic lines, consists of unwinding feed yarn and of removing its end portions which are defective either by mechanical consistency or by size. In its passage from the spool 1 to the package 12, the yarn 2 is controlled by the yarn clearer 11 which detects its dimensional defects, both in terms of cross-section and in terms of length. The yarn clearer 11 commands the cutting of the yarn each time the detected size of the yarn 2 is not within the acceptable range for the yarn, which is preset at the start of each specific winding treatment according to a calibration which is more or less strict depending upon the desired dimensional homogeneity of the yarn being wound. The yarn-cutting member is incorporated in the same yarn clearer 11, or else it is separate but directly controlled by it. In
In more sophisticated models of winders the frequency of the defects is checked directly by the yarn-clearer to detect the so-called moire defects, or by the command member for the reattachment to check that the winding unit is not working with low yield on a spool with too many defects which it is better to throw away immediately and replace with another new spool. Generally, the spool fed and the package produced contain a measured and controlled length of yarn, currently indicated as metering, but depending upon the defects contained in the yarn there is not a precise relationship between the two meterings, i.e. between the number of spools fed and the package produced by them, although each package is generally produced with tens of spools. The winding unit is, indeed, equipped with the so-called “meter-counter” which measures the length of the yarn under treatment both unwinding from the spool 1 and winding up onto the package 12.
After the yarn 2 has been broken or cut by the yarn clearer 11, the sensor or detector of the yarn 4 indicates the absence of yarn to the control unit 16 of the winding station. The control unit 16 comprises and in turn commands a unit 16′ which contains the command and control program for the yarn reattachment process, through the connections shown with a broken line according to a standard sequence of successive operations or steps essentially consisting of:
In the search and capture operations of the two ends, before they are joined a certain standard length of yarn is sucked in and eliminated from the two sides which contain the defective portion which has engaged with the yarn clearer 11 causing its cutting intervention or else it snaps off. The yarn 2 wound on the package 12 is thus removed of its defective portions which have been detected by the yarn clearer 11 as being outside the allowed calibration range which was set at the start of the treatment of the stock of yarn.
The present invention is described here with reference to its main application to treatment in winders for yarn wound on spools, given as a non-limiting example, since the device and process according to the present invention can have advantageous application in controlling the high-speed unwinding of yarn wound in another package, for example in so-called package/package-winding.
A technical problem which has a substantial influence upon the quality of wound yarn comes from the portions of yarn which have a widespread irregularity with frequent defects which cannot be detected by the normally controlled member 11 or which cannot be eliminated with the normal yarn reattachment cycles, unless at the expense of the winding yield and with too narrow calibrations. The problem of long irregularities in yarn is, for example, considered in U.S. Pat. No. 5,862,660.
Generally speaking, such widespread imperfections are at the two far ends of the package of yarn being fed in the form of a spool or another winding package. Anomalous portions of yarn thus lie upon the outer surface of the feed package and are the ones which are first put to work, hereafter said portions being referred to as start portions; other anomalous portions of yarn, on the other hand, lie in contact with the surface of the tube, and hereafter shall be referred to as end portions, still with reference to the feed package. In patent EP 787.674, the elimination of such end portions of yarn is considered.
In the case in which the yarn of the feed spool comes from a normal ring spinning, those portions of the tube and on the outer layer correspond with the start and end transitional steps of the spool itself, for starting and doffing respectively, and are in the order of one meter or slightly more. The normal standards of joining in the winding process are thus able to eliminate such portions of yarn produced in the transitional step and special provisions are not necessary.
On the other hand, when we are dealing with a special ring spinning, like that of flake yarns, i.e. from non-conventional spinning or from special feeds, the length of the start and end defective portions can greatly exceed the end lengths taken away in joining and thus it is necessary to modify the interventions. As an example, the ring yarn coming from a start portion of the sliver package obtained from the flyer machine can often have a long portion with widespread defectiveness.
The removal of such layers is not therefore possible since the yarn-clearer is not capable of detecting these widespread defects, or else it would require excessively raising the sensitivity level of the yarn-clearer—i.e. narrowing its allowed defectiveness range—with the consequent reduction in the yield of the normal winding operations.
In other cases, for example in package/package-winding of packages coming from dying baths, shown as an example in
The present invention refers to a process and a device for removing the defective start and end portions from yarn on a feed package affected by the aforementioned widespread defectiveness. The purpose of the present invention is to realise a fast and simplified process for eliminating the start and end portions of yarn wound on feed packages replacing the normal reattachment process as a consequence of the breaking or cutting of the yarn which takes place in normal winding of the yarn wound in a package.
The present invention, in its most general form of the process for eliminating the end portions of feed yarn, is defined in claim 1.
The characteristics and advantages of the process and device for eliminating the end portions of feed yarn according to the present invention shall become clearer from the description of some of its typical embodiments, given as an example and not for limiting purposes, illustrated hereafter with reference to the figures.
In the figures both the technical problem and the solutions proposed with the present invention are illustrated.
The present invention realises the removal of the defective end portions from the yarn of each spool or package of yarn fed to the winding unit. For such a purpose during the unwinding of the start portion and, at the end of the metering carried out on such a package, of its end portion, the line of connection with its unit 16′ is disconnected or deactivated, still carried out by the control unit 16 of the winding station, according to
During the intervention of the unit 20 the yarn clearer 11, or at least its yarn cutting member, is deactivated with the connection 21, since the portions to be eliminated do not have to be shortened any further. The start and end portions are eliminated by sucking them in, unwinding them from the underlying feed spool and from the overlying wound package respectively, commanding and using the suction capturing nozzles for the ends autonomously, independently and outside of the reattachment cycle. For such a purpose, the controls 22 and 23 are respectively connected to the suction nozzle from the side of the spool 1 and of the package 12 for the autonomous command of such suction nozzles to move close to and explore the surfaces of such two packages of yarn with analogous methods to those of standard reattachment, for a specifically preset time, depending upon the length of yarn to be eliminated for each part of the stock of yarn being treated. With the connection 24, the counter-rotation of its actuation roller 13 is simultaneously commanded so that the package gives off the length of yarn necessary for the removal of its end portion.
At the end of such removal operations, the unit 20 commands the same operations from c) to g) of the normal reattachment process, or else gives up their management to the unit 16′ which is made to function again by the unit 16, and, however, it disconnects the unit 20. In other words, the different operations a′) and b′) of the command process of the unit 20 differ from the operations a) and b) of the standard process of the unit 16′ substantially for the actuation times and for eliminated lengths of yarn, barring the simultaneous deactivation of the yarn clearer 11.
It is worth noting that such operations of removing yarn from its defective end portions is carried out with the same members which carry out the normal reattachment cycle, with suitably sized intervention times and simply excluding the action of the yarn clearer 11.
As for the device which takes care of the reattachment of the ends through the capturing and joining thereof, which—according to the present invention—also allows the elimination of the defective end portions of the feed packages to be realised, it has the characteristic that the different members which operate in its operating cycle, like the suction nozzles, cutting members and the yarn-splicer, are commanded and capable of being actuated independently from each other and are not rigidly interconnected—apart from the software-type controls—and are managed by the control unit 16 of the winding station with alternative and different procedures according to the needs to be satisfied each time. The present invention, in its most general embodiment as a device, is defined in claim 6.
According to a preferred embodiment of the process according to the invention, according to
At the end of such removal operations i1-i4 of the process steps described up to now, the unit 30 commands the same operations b)-g) of the normal reattachment cycle, already having the end available from the package side, or—in the same way as the case described previously—it passes the management thereof to the unit 16′ which is made to function again by the unit 16, and instead disconnects the unit 30.
The process and the device described up to now with reference to
A further variant embodiment of the present invention is illustrated with reference to
From the start of the unwinding until the positive disappearance of the signal the metering wound and to be eliminated of the start winding portion is detected, for example with the outlined process with reference to
Alternatively, it is possible to use just the sensors 53 mentioned above only to detect the start of the unwinding of the end layer of the feed package which has run out, whereas the detection of the unwinding of the start portion of the new package is given by the change in feed itself as the start and thus detected by the meter counter itself of the winding station.
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MI2001A2421 | Nov 2001 | IT | national |
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