Machinery for extraction and traditional spinning of plant fibres

Vegetable fibres are produced from bast, fruit, seed, leaf, and sheath of plants. They are discrete of single entities as in cotton; ligno-cellulosic meshy as in jute and mesta; long as in jute, mesta, flax, sisal, ramie, pineapple leaf fibre (PALF); and short as in areca nut, kapok. Some of them like cotton and ramie are strong and fine with high length to breadth aspect ratio for good spinability into yarn for fabric. Primarily, cotton is used for apparel; jute and mesta for packaging; ramie for fabrics, ropes and currency paper blanks; sisal for rope; flax for linen; sun hemp for rope and tissue paper, etc. Ramie is the strongest amongst all the vegetable fibres and, therefore, it has great promises for specialised applications. The traditional uses of some vegetable fibres are in packaging of food grains, sugar, potato, onion, etc. Emphasis has, therefore, been given to crops like jute, mesta, sisal and PALF right from their extraction to finished products like yarns, fabric, sacking, hessian, ropes, twines, soil-savers, craft papers, etc. through mechanical processing and intervention of a host of machinery. The need for production of fine yarn/blended yarn has become acute in the context of manufacture/export of fabrics and ready-made garments. Therefore, it becomes essential to explore all spinning technologies for production of market friendly yarn.