yarn making, continuous filament

CONTINUOUS FILAMENT YARNS

A filament yarn is a collection of parallel filaments
lying close together, straight along the whole length of the yarn.

All filament yarns, with one exception, are man-made,
the only exception being silk
silk is of course a natural protien filament extruded by the silk-worm.

The man-made yarns are made by producing, in one operation, the required number of filaments, at the desired thickness.

To make silk yarns the required number of filaments have to be combined together at the spinning stage.

Yarns made from only one filament are known as
monofilamets
(invisble sewing thread and knitting-in elastic)

Yarns made from more than one filament are known as
multifilaments
(most man-made knitting yarns)

Man-made Filament yarns can be further divided into four sub-groups

flat, textured, biocomponent and film (tape or split) yarns.

TEXTURED CONTINUOUS FILAMENT YARNS

Not to be confused with fancy or decorative yarns
Textured filament yarns are man-made yarns whose filaments have been modified
Distortions such as crimps and loops and knots have been introduced during proccessing
A number of different methods are used to introduce these deformations

TAPE OR SPLIT FILM YARNS

To make film, the polymer is extruded in a thin wide sheet
To produce tape the film is cut into narrow strips or ribbons
Slits can then be made along the length of the ribbon to produce a split film yarn