FIEUD OF INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to metallic card clothing, and more particularly, to an improved metallic card clothing that comprises a divider like projection in teeth roots so as to prevent fiber flow to the roots, thereby preventing tooth damage and increasing tooth life.

BACKGROUND

Metallic card clothing is a combing element in a carding machine and is used in all textile mills, to clean, individualize and parallelize the fibres. In the carding machine, the card clothing, in the form of a continuous saw toothed profiled wire is wound on the carding machine’s cylinder roller. The card clothing generally comprises of a base portion and a blade portion having teeth.

A conventional carding wire has a clear trough in between tooth to facilitate penetration of fibre and flow through the trough to the tip of the tooth coming ahead as shown in Figure 1 and 2. In such designs, the fibre flow will go to the front edge of tooth and get combed for fibre separation.

The life of the card clothing tooth is enhanced by heat treating the tooth. Unfortunately, such geometry of the tooth does not allow the tooth to get hardened at the base as much as the tip and thus leaving the root soft. In a way it facilitates the mounting of card clothing but at the same time, it cannot meet heavy abrasion of fibre in high production cards as well as cannot withstand with high tensile fibres, resulting in high wear and damage to the root and leading to inefficient combing and poor life. The regular tooth profile images are represented in Figure 3 and 4 for better visualization. Figure 5 and 6 shows damages in the root, where the hardness could not be achieved. Any number of attempts made to harden the tip to the root evenly become cumbersome and leads to high hardness in root which is undesirable for wire mounting at the time of application. The soft tooth base cannot withstand the abrasion of both cotton and synthetic fibres. As a result, the root damage causes turbulence and disturbs the fibre flow, which reduces the quality life and asks for new set of card clothing as a premature replacement. Thus, there exists a need for a card clothing geometry and design that would prevent fiber flow to the soft roots, thereby preventing tooth damage and increasing tooth life.

Reference is made to 1501/DELNP/2014 that discloses a metallic card wire comprising elongated rib portion and teeth, wherein one or more hunches (may be a flattened hunch) are present on the back segment of the teeth. The presence of the hunches or flattened hunches, and their dimensions (especially the undeep valleys) creates additional surface at the tip of the card wire onto which the fibres can stay by means of friction and by means of geometrical blocking, without the fibres going too deep into the wire. A better carding is the result as fibres are more easily taken by the tops and the doffer.

Reference is made to IN201644010010 that discloses a metallic card clothing wire comprising teeth having first tip, second tip and elevation at the back surface of the teeth.

Yet another reference is made to IN201744040340Adisclosing a card clothing wire comprising a blade portion having first tip and second tip at the back surface of the tooth.

Reference is further made to WO2015154837A1 that discloses a card wire design where the teeth of the sawtooth wire have a tooth contour, which allows a frequent as possible abrasion of the tooth tip portions. For this purpose, a cusp is formed on the tooth tip portion which is reduced slightly with each grinding operation and thus the tooth tip travels with simultaneous sharpening down. For example, the sawtooth wire can be reground several times until the cusps is completely ground on the tooth tip portion, and the tooth tip is formed prior to the termination of the use of the sawtooth wire by a direct transition from the tooth tip portion in the tooth face. The prior art documents hitherto disclose formation of hunches, cusps, elevation and a second teeth at the back surface of the teeth. These may result in slight prevention of fiber flow into the root of tooth but are not efficient than the present invention.

SUMMARY

The following presents a simplified summary of the invention to provide basic understanding of some aspects of the invention, neither to identify the critical elements nor to delineate the scope of the invention. Its sole purpose is to present some concept of the invention in a simplified form, as a prelude to a more detailed description of the invention presented later.

An object of the present invention is to prevent fibers to flow into the tooth root of a metallic card clothing so as to save the tooth and increase the life of the tooth substantially.

Accordingly, an aspect of the present invention relates to a metallic card clothing that comprises of a divider like projection in the root of the tooth, which saves the root by preventing fibres to flow in to the tooth root.

Other aspects, advantages and salient features of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the detailed description, which, taken in conjunction with the annexed drawings, discloses exemplary embodiments of the invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS

The above and other features, aspects, and advantages of the subject matter will be better understood with regard to the following description and accompanying drawings.

Figures 1-2 illustrate a conventional metallic card clothing.

Figures 3-4 illustrate regular tooth profiles of a conventional metallic card clothing.

Figures 5-6 illustrate damages in the root, where the hardness could not be achieved. Figure 7 illustrates a metallic card clothing according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 8 illustrates a divider design in a metallic card clothing according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 9 illustrates a divider design in a metallic card clothing according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 10 illustrates a divider design in equal pitch configuration as well as variable pitch configuration.

Figure 11 illustrates a lickerin wire with the divider, according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Figures 12-13 illustrate the presence of divider before every tooth and random position with different shapes in a standard teeth version (Fig 12) and variable teeth version (Fig 13) of metallic wires, according to embodiments of the present invention.

Persons skilled in the art will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and may have not been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figure may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure. Throughout the drawings, it should be noted that like reference numbers are used to depict the same or similar elements, features, and structures.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The following description with reference to the accompanying drawings is provided to assist in a comprehensive understanding of exemplary embodiments of the invention. It includes various specific details to assist in that understanding but these are to be regarded as merely exemplary.

Accordingly, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that various changes and modifications of the embodiments described herein can be made without departing from the scope of the invention. In addition, descriptions of well-known structure and method are omitted for clarity and conciseness. The terms and words used in the following description and claims are not limited to the bibliographical meanings, but, are merely used by the inventor to enable a clear and consistent understanding of the invention. Accordingly, it should be apparent to those skilled in the art that the following description of exemplary embodiments of the present invention are provided for illustration purpose only and not for the purpose of limiting the invention as defined by the appended claims and their equivalents.

Features that are described and/or illustrated with respect to one embodiment may be used in the same way or in a similar way in one or more other embodiments and/or in combination with or instead of the features of the other embodiments.

It should be emphasized that the term “comprises/comprising” if used in this specification is taken to specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps or component but does not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, components or groups thereof.

The present invention discloses a metallic card clothing comprising a divider like projection at tooth root that prevents fiber flow into the tooth root as non-limitedly shown in Figure 7. This design eventually prevents tooth wear and damage and thus increases quality life of the card clothing.

The divider protects the tooth root from excess abrasion and also acts as a divider of fibre bunches, seed coats and trashes by fragmenting and channelling them to a gap between the points and further saving the tooth. The divided or broken trashes easily flow between the wire gaps and therefore embedment problem also gets minimized.

The design of the divider needs various shapes and sizes to cater size of the pitch and also the application. The different shapes of the divider according to different embodiments of the present invention are shown in Figure 8 and 9. The trials on the implementation of the present invention have given better initial performance and also longer quality life the design intended. The present document may indicate a particular shape and size or a few shapes and sizes of the divider for the purpose of explanation and describing different embodiments and the same do restrict the scope of the present invention in any manner.

Reference has been made to Figure 10, where the divider design is followed in a conventional standard equal pitch configuration as well as variable pitch configuration as disclosed in earlier granted Indian patent 75/MAS/2000 as an added feature.

The height of the divider D2 and D3 in Figure 8 and Figure 9 is varying from 25% to 75% of the dimension Dl .

According to an embodiment of the present invention, Figures 8 and 9 illustrate a metallic card (801) for use in carding machines has been disclosed. The card comprises a base (802) and a blade (803) formed on the base, the blade comprising teeth (804), characterized in that the teeth (804) comprises a tooth pitch p, a first rising edge (8041) having a defined contour, transitions from a tooth root base (8042) to form a first tip (8043) of a first tooth, the first tip of the first tooth comprising a tooth height Dl from the tooth root base (8042), a working angle substantially between 0° to 50° formed by the first rising edge (8041) of the first tooth tip (8043), an angle substantially between 50° to 90° formed by a trailing edge (8044) of the first tooth; a second rising edge (8045) having a defined contour substantially transitions from a point (8046) at the tooth root base (8042) or a point (8046’) at the trailing edge (8044) of the first tooth tip to form a second tooth, the second tooth comprising a height D3 from the point (8046) at the tooth root base (8042) or from the point (8046’) at the trailing edge (8044) of the first tooth tip to a tip (8047) of the second tooth, a height D2 from the tip (8047) of the second tooth to the tooth root base (802), and a trailing edge (8048) from the tip (8047) of the second tooth being contoured to substantially transition into a rising edge(8041”) of a subsequent first tooth tip (8043”).

According to another embodiment of the present invention, the teeth of the metallic card have equal or varying pitch lengths. Further in another embodiment, the first tip of the first tooth transitions into a substantially flat inclined edge to form a second tip (9043’) which further transitions into the trailing edge of the first tooth (9044). In an embodiment of the present invention, the dimensions of the height D2 and height D3 of the second tooth of the metallic card varies substantially between 25% to 75% of the dimension of the height D1 of the first tip of the first tooth. In some embodiments the dimensions of the height D2 and D3 of the second tooth are equal.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the substantially flat inclined edge transitioning from the first tip to the second tip of the first tooth has an angle of approximately 2 degrees, and the substantially flat inclined edge transitioning from the first tip to the second tip of the first tooth has a length substantially between 0.3 to 0.7 mm.

In an embodiment of the present invention, substantially arcuate edge formed by the trailing edge of the first tooth transitioning into the second rising edge of the second tooth and substantially arcuate edge formed by the rising edge of the second tooth, the tip of the second tooth and the trailing edge of the second tooth and arcuate edge formed by the trailing edge of the second tooth transitioning into the first rising edge of the subsequent first tooth have different radii dimensions.

According to a further embodiment of the present invention, the metallic card is a lickerin wire, a cylinder wire and the like.

Similar dividers are also applicable in Lickerin wire application as shown in Figure 11. The nature of high load, higher abrasion and wear are more predominant in Lickerin application.

Referring to Figures 11, 12 and 13, the second tooth tip (11047; 12047; 13047) of the metallic card / lickerin wire is positioned alternatively or once in between three first tooth tips (11043, 11043”, 1104; 12043, 12043”, 1204; 13043, 13043”, 1304). The presence of divider (second tooth) before every tooth (first tooth) or at an interval of 2, 3, 4 and 5 teeth pitches also possible as shown in Figures 12 and 13. The divider and the tooth flank are separated by a gap of min 0.05mm on either side to facilitate heat treatment process to harden the root of the tooth to the extent possible. Moreover, the divider is also partially hardened to sustain some wear.

According to experimental trials being conducted with the exemplary embodiments of a metallic card clothing as described hereinabove, the following tables showcase the improvements brought forth in comparison to regular profde mounted card.

TABLE I - TRIAL 1

While comparing the Seed Coat neps in sliver, significant reduction noticed in divider tooth profile mounted card as compared with regular profile mounted card. In yam imperfection level, quality improvement of 21 % found in divider tooth profile wire mounted Card.

TABLE II - TRIAL 2

While conducting the trials in identical manner, there is an improvement of 10%noticed in divider tooth profile.

TABLE III - TRIAL 3 Some of the non-limiting advantages of the present invention are:

1. Prevents tooth damage and wear

2. Improves quality of life of the metallic card clothing. Although a metallic card clothing has been described in language specific to structural features, it is to be understood that the embodiments disclosed in the above section are not necessarily limited to the specific methods or devices described herein. Rather, the specific features are disclosed as examples of implementations of a metallic card clothing.