There are many types of loom, according to the weft insertion method of weaving classification, can be divided into shuttle loom and shuttleless loom.

Weft insertion with shuttle loom is a loom that uses traditional wooden shuttle or plastic shuttle for weft insertion. Due to the large volume and heavy weight of the shuttle, the shuttle is repeatedly thrown back and forth, making the machine vibration, high noise, high energy consumption, slow speed and low efficiency.

The weft insertion methods of shuttleless loom are also various, including rapier, jet, jet, slice shuttle and multi-shed (polyphase).

Shuttleless loom using jet stream to pull weft through shed.

1 Historical Development

01, in 1949, Czechoslovakia was the first to make a jet loom, due to the spread of the air flow did not control measures, resulting in woven fabric width of only 45cm.

02. In 1956, the combined pipe piece was developed to restrict airflow diffusion, which made a breakthrough in jet technology.

03. In 1963, the Netherlands developed the auxiliary nozzle weft insertion technology, which greatly improved the width and loom speed.

04, in the 1970s, a new form of limited airflow diffusion - shaped buckle came out, and the variety range and quality of the fabric woven by the air jet loom have made new progress.

2 Principle of weft insertion

Jet weft insertion is the use of air as the weft insertion medium, with the jet compressed air to produce friction traction to pull the weft yarn, the weft yarn through the shed, through the jet generated to achieve the purpose of weft insertion.

Characteristics of jet insertion

Jet insertion is characterized by high speed, large tension, small shed, and high requirements for raw yarn and semi-products.

Jet insertion is a passive insertion method. The weft yarn has little tension and no control when it crosses the drop, so it lacks sufficient traction on weft yarn with high linear density or fancy yarns. At the same time, the opening state of the warp has a great influence on the quality of weft insertion, which is easy to produce fabric defects such as weft shrinkage and weft retrace.

3 Features

Among several shuttleless looms, the air-jet loom is one of ZuiGao's speed. Due to its reasonable filling insertion method, high filling rate, simple and safe operation, wide variety adaptability, low machine material consumption, high efficiency, high speed and low noise, it has become one of ZuiJu's new cloth machines with a promising future. Since the air-jet loom uses the air-flow filling method, ZuiDa has the disadvantage of higher energy consumption.

4 Scope of application and fabric varieties

The early air-jet loom has a small range of adaptation, mainly producing white cloth, and the cloth size is small, the speed is slow, the fabric limitation is large, and the fabric quality is not high. However, since the early 1980s, with the development of special reed and relay filling technology of air jet loom and the application of electronic computers, sensors and frequency control technology, the speed of air jet loom and the automatic monitoring level of loom have been greatly improved, especially the rapid development of air jet loom in the past 10 years. It has made the air-jet loom have many advantages such as high quality, high speed, high yield and high self-control level, and the variety adaptation range has been greatly improved.

The width of the air jet loom has risen from 190cm and 280cm to 340cm, 360cm and 400cm. The main nozzles have been increased to double nozzles and four nozzles; Multi-color weft insertion system controlled by computer software can select from 4 to 12 colors. The filling yarn raw materials can be chemical fiber filament, chemical fiber short fiber, pure cotton yarn, wool yarn, glass fiber yarn, all kinds of fancy yarn, etc. The products range from high count fine and thin high-grade fabrics to thick count dense and thick fabrics. Dornier jet loom has been used to produce industrial fabrics such as filter fabrics, emery cloth twill fabrics, steam fabrics and glass fiber wall fabrics. Belgium's Bigano, Japan's Tsudakoma new air-jet loom is also equipped with electronic jacquard, multi-arm and other opening systems to adapt to the production of a variety of fabrics.

5 Comparison with other shuttleless looms

Rapier loom

Rapier loom has a unique advantage in variety adaptability, but the filling rate is lower than air jet loom, only 1400m/min, about 50% of air jet loom. The yarn recovery rate is higher than other shuttleless looms. At present, rapier loom is mainly used for the production of small batches and various weft fabrics such as decorative objects.

Chip-drop loom

The slate-shuttle loom has advantages in weaving extra wide fabrics and high-grade decorative fabrics, but the filling is lower than that of the air-jet loom, which is 1200m/min. The energy consumption for the acceleration of the shuttle only accounts for 15%, and the energy consumption is unreasonable. The material properties and weaving precision of the picking and twisting shaft are required. The price is expensive and the one-time investment cost is large.

Water jet loom

Water jet loom has limitations in weaving quality, and is only suitable for the weaving of hydrophobic yarns such as synthetic fiber and glass fiber. The relevant components on the loom should be made of stainless steel.

Polyphase loom

The polyphase loom can be woven with very high filling rate. However, it can only produce simple ordinary fabrics, and the power consumption per square meter of fabric is higher than that of other shuttleless looms.