Self-actor
A self-actor (English self-actor , self-doer ') is a further development of a spinning machine of the type spinning mule by Richard Roberts . While the machine was controlled manually with the spinning mule , the self-actuator could work completely automatically. Operating personnel were only required to attach the broken threads and to change the bobbins . This development was difficult especially true because the spider with the spinning mule representing a remote process and from the serving workers a special degree of sensitivity for the behavior of his machine required. The technical solution to the problem was a skillful control of all successive movement sequences of the machine by means of gear drives and coupling processes via the driving transmissions .
The growing dependence of the factory owners on qualified workers who could operate the spinning mule led to the search for fully automated spinning machines and ultimately to the further development of the spinning mule as a self-actuator. However, the problem was not solved by the self-actuator, because their maintenance , installation and care also had to be carried out by extremely well-qualified workers.
What is remarkable about a self-actuator are the completely mechanical control loops and their “program” “written” with levers, cams and gears.
Main ingredients
The self-actuator consists of two main assemblies, a standing drafting system and a movable carriage guided on rails. The drafting system consists of a holder for the wound slivers, the primary material for self-actuator spinning. Rovings are several millimeter wide rovings that have almost no strength. The spools with the rovings are on top of the machine. The actual drafting system is located just below. It consists of rollers and rubber bands that stretch the runners.
The threads are fed from the drafting system to the spindles. The spindles consist of a rotating mandrel and sleeves, called cops, attached to it. The spindles are driven, which means that the fibers are twisted between the drafting system and the spindles - this is how the yarn is made.
Working method
The self-actuator works remotely, i.e. discontinuously. Several processes follow staggered in time:
- Initial situation: The carriage is at the drafting system, the yarn is wound. The carriage begins to move away from the drafting system, while the drafting system is preparing the warped roving. The rotating spindles twist the roving into the yarn, and at the same time there is another delay because the carriage drives away faster than the drafting system delivers roving.
- At the end of the rail, the carriage stops, the drafting system stops and so do the spindles. A wire stretched between brackets is lifted from below, it tensions the thread and lifts the uppermost wraps around the spindles.
- A second wire, stretched between hangers, comes from above and pulls the thread down between the first wire and the thread that has already been wound up. The yarn stretched to a Z now leaves the tube tangentially.
- Now the backward movement of the carriage begins, coupled with rotating spindles that wind up the spun yarn. The speed of the carriage is linked to the spindle speed in such a way that the thread tension between the drafting system and the cops remains constant. So that not all the yarn is spooled onto the bobbin in the same place, the second wire also moves slowly downwards, the spooled thread is distributed over a certain width.
Chronological order
The self-actuator was invented almost simultaneously with the ring spinning machine at the beginning of the 19th century . It was only after the Second World War that the self-actor was completely displaced by the ring spinning machine and the newly emerging rotor spinning machine . The self-actor's discontinuous way of working was fatal: This limits productivity, complicates the process and tends to lead to periodic thick or thin spots in the yarn. Regardless, the self-actor was a great advance for the time of its emergence.
Web links
- Film with a mule during operation, you have to imagine the operation of a self-actuator in a similar way .
- From wool to yarn - Part 2 Spinning Museum film about the self-actor.