SILK SPINNING

Dr.H.B.Mahesha, Yuvaraja’s College, University of Mysore, Mysore.

There are two types of silk yarns used in the weaving sector. One is raw silk –
which is comparable to filament yarn in synthetic textiles.
Second one is spun silk – which is comparable to staple fiber in synthetic
textiles.
The process of producing spun silk yarn is known as silk spinning. Silk reeling
is a wet process where as the silk spinning is a dry process.
The various steps involved in spun silk production are as follows:

1. Degumming
The wastes are collected and put in to the machine having large drums with
water. It is boiled at 90-95 °C for 1 hour depending upon the sericin content is to be
removed. The wastes are then washed in washing drum (degumming is done either
with soap and soda solution or by enzymatic reaction). for mulberry cocoons
generally soap 22. 5% and soda 6.25% is used. The washing drum will have wooden
pad like structures. This exerts pressure while washing and this process is called
stumping to remove the soap and soda it is washed repeatedly with water. It is then
hydro extracted and squeezed. The silk then dried in hot air drying machine. After
drying the next step is conditioning. It means while drying the silk is completely
dried and therefore, they are made to regain the moisture. It is kept in conditioning
room for 15 days, during this period it absorbs 11% moisture. Up to conditioning, all
the different types of wastes are kept separately. After conditioning, the different
types of silk will become uniform.

2. Mixing and Ball Making

The next process is mixing and ball making. To get uniform silk, different silk
wastes are mixed in order to get good process performance, economy and quality.
While ball making, the degummed silk will be weighed and 200-250 gm of silk is
taken in the form of a ball.

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 3. Opening
This is done in machine called opening machine. This consists of fork like
structure. The ball is fed to the machine and fork opens the tangled mass of silk fiber
and ball becomes
comes like a ribbon structure, in which filaments are more or less
parallel.

4. Filling and Pegging

The mat or web from the opening machine is transferred to the drum of a
similar machine called a filling or pegging machine. The surface of this drum is
studded
d with rows of combs spaced at different intervals (combing action rather than
opening action). The material delivered fro
from the machine is called slivers.
5. Combing or Dressing
The main purpose of dressing or combing is to eliminate the short fibers and
to parallelize the long fibers. The short fibers which are removed in 2
2--4 dressing will
be utilized for the production of noil yarns. Parallelized fiber drafts (long fibers)
obtained from the drum are called slivers.

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 6. Cleaning of Slivers
The dressed material is subjected to visual cleaning on a glass, below which
light is provided. Foreign matters are removed to improve the quality of yarn.
7. Drawing
The series
es of preparatory drawing operations takes the ribbon or slivers
through six different
nt drawing machines in each of which it is submitted to extension
(drafting) varying from 1:6 to 1:10. From the final drawing frame the slivers is
reduced to a fine slubbing.
In drawing frame, doubling and drafting takes place simultaneously, so
sometimes blending of different slivers belonging to different fibers
fib may be
employed viz., 4 silk + 2 Terylene etc.,
8. Roving
This is done in a roving frame. The sliver from the drawing frame is further
subjected to attenuation, parallelization and twisting. The slig
slightly
htly twisted roving is
wound on a bobbin which is used for spinning frames.
9. Spinning

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 Roving will be converted in to a required size twisted are wound on a bobbin.
As the material is thin and also the number of fibers will be less, so in order to bind
them, twisting is necessary.
10. Winding and Doubling
Two or three single spun yarns are doubled and twisted.
11. Gassing
The protruding fibers on the surface of yarn are burnt-out by passing the yarn
through a clear flame at a speed of 500-600 meters per minute to improve the luster
and appearance of yarn.
12. Cleaning
After gassing, the thread is passes between rotating steel rollers which
remove the adhered, burnt particles from the thread.
After this process, the yarn is taken for reeling to make standard sized hanks.
Then it is made to skeining, bundling and bales. The spun silk bundles weigh 5 kg
and bale 45 kgs. Before going for skeining, imperfections are manually removed.
Noil Yarns
The waste obtained at various stages of spun silk yarn manufacture is utilized
for the production of coarser varieties of yarn which are known as Noil Yarns. The
process for production of noil yarn is similar to that of waste cotton system. Noil
Yarns are used for the manufacture of carpets.
Uses of Spun Silk Yarns
Matka (hand Spinning) yarns are used for the production of dhothis, sarees,
kurthas etc., Usually the matka yarns are used in weft direction.
The machine spun yarns are used either in warp or weft or in both directions.
They are used for the production of suiting’s and shirting’s from fines quality yarns.
The coarser type of spun silk yarns are used for embroidered bed covers, curtains,
table covers, inferior sort of shirting’s etc.,
Some type of spun silk fabrics can also be produced in combination with raw
silk yarn in weft direction. Such fabrics are used for lungies, shirting’s etc., course
spun silk and noil silk yarns are used for the manufacture of carpets. Blended silk

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yarns are also being produced by blending silk with cotton, wool, polyester etc., to
get desired functional properties.
Spun Silk Industry in Karnataka
Karnataka, apart from producing raw silk, also produces more than 14 lakh
kgs of silk wastes as bye product in silk reeling, twisting, weaving etc., Apart from
this waste is consumed by the government spun silk mills at Channapatna, operating
under public sector since 1938 to manufacture spun silk and noil yarn. The capacity
of this mill is8700 spindles in spun silk and 630 spindles of noil yarn. In private
sector, there are two 2 spun silk mills viz., Nova silk at Bangalore with 3000 spindles
under spun silk yarn and 1000 spindles under noil yarn. They produced about 60
tonns of spun silk yarn and 70 tonns of noil yarn during 1984-85. Apart from these,
two more spun silk mills are located in the state. One in Chikkaballapura and
another in Nanjanagud.
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