Yarn Dyeing Machines - Fraud of the Century.

The Biggest Fraud in Yarn Dyeing Machines is the way the capacity is defined and the way the machine is designed. For all those who are Textile Graduates know that the technology of yarn dyeing is that yarn is wetted in a dye liquor for a certain time and certain temperature to achieve the desired shade.
So basically a HT HP Package dyeing machine is a pressure cooker, which all of us have in our kitchen and your wife cooks on routine in this cooker. And every cooker the capacity is defined in LITRES AND NOT IN KGS. Which is to say, litres of water that would fill the empty cooker.
Technically speaking the machine maker then sells his machines with a specification of Liquor to Material ratio of 1:6 or 7 or 8 and then takes pride that he has now reduced it to 5 or 4.5. Now one has to be enough brain damaged to believe that yarn requires 5 times the liquor to dye. Say Viscose, which has the highest moister regain of 13% and was loaded with zero regain, even then it would not absorb more then 13% of its own weight and the balance will get circulated and only the dye diffusion would take place. So, where is the need for 5 times dye liquor.

But the machine maker is a mechanical vessel maker, he does not know what are the fundamentals of yarn dyeing.As a copy paste artist, he has copied the design of one of his competitor and now proudly unloads it to naive users. The first designer of the machine in the early 19 the century over designed the machine to make it foolproof and allowed 10 times more water then was actually required. But those days, when power, steam etc was very low priced, such machines were never questioned and now of course, if someone makes a small change in that design, the machine is questioned for the performance , more so by the competitor .

No one ever waits and thinks, why should there be 6 times water then the dye load ? Which theory in Dyeing says that there should be 6 times water, only then the yarn will dye ? The prime job of water is to wet the dyes and the yarn and at certain temperature the dyes will diffuse into the package and there is no other work of water. But does anyone stop and think and ask the machine maker to redesign the machine , lest it should fail and he be blamed for all the loss.

Water to the extent of 2 times is already more then enough, though the optimum level will have to be researched and may well be much lower then 2 times and any case never more then that. More water means, more steam required for heating, more chemicals and auxiliaries, which are added as a percentage of water, more electricity for pumping the water and more effluent to process and more waste of water.

If you are a Textile Engineer and have worked many years in dyeing, then you know what is to be done now. Any existing installation in your plant is actually worth double the capacity, if properly configured. So, without any capital overlay, you can dye atleast 50% more by properly utilizing your assets. And this additional 50% is getting dyed almost free for you.Exactly the same principle of Home Cooker applies to a dyeing machine.

Therefore the capacity of dyeing machine technically should be in LITRES AND NOT KGS. BUT THE YARN DYEING MACHINES ARE SOLD AS CAPACITY OF YARN THAT IT CAN DYE AND NOT THE CAPACITY OF DYE LIQUOR IT CAN HOLD. If you knew the dye liquor capacity, you would have then quickly calculated, how much yarn could load based on 1: 2.5 material to liquor ratio. However, as of now no such concept exist.

Any Intelligent Yarn Dyer knows that he can then load more yarn by ensuring the following on the carrier to get a higher payload per dye cycle. SO THE CARRIER IS SOMETHING WHICH NEEDS TO BE DESIGNED BY THE USER AND NOT THE MACHINE MAKER AND SHOULD TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE SMALLEST SPACE AVAILABLE FOR LOADING OF THE YARN .Bearing in mind that Yarn to Liquor ratio should be 1: 2.5 .

( After I first published this report here, many emails challenged me, stating that any case the machine designer has done this job, however, to get the defined ratio, it will not just the carrier, but simple use of intelligence. If you can solve the problem below, you can get the ratio, otherwise no)

9 points are plotted below. Cut these with only 4 lines without lifting of your pen ( clue :lines can cross ) and if you can do it, then you have the solution of getting the ratio of 1:2.5 with no matter, what the design of your machine and what the maker specifies as 1:10 or 1:6.
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0 0 0

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Any Intelligent Yarn Dyer knows that he can then load more yarn by ensuring the following on the carrier to get a higher payload per dye cycle.

BEST DESIGNER WILL GET THE HIGHEST PAYLOAD AND LOWEST COST OF YARN DYEING, SOME OF THE AREAS OF DESIGN ARE AS UNDER.

Longer Dyeing Pole .Less Space between the Poles.Manipulating the Dye package to be smaller and more dense to load more kilos.Loading yarns to the extent of 1:2.5 ratio of dye liquor .

An intelligent dyer will also advise the machine maker to make spindles of the dyeing machine with simple three thin supporting rods for the yarn and fully OPEN so that the YARN COLUMN effectively acts like a virtual spindle and there is no spindle. This of course, reduces the pump pressure, makes the liquor move rapidly across the package easily and surely can be made flexible to load only to the extent of packages required so that no blinds are required to cover the unused spindle length.

A good yarn dyer will not have a yarn carrier. He will have the machine directly with poles and provide for a small pneumatic system to load and unload the yarn coloumn . So, there is no need for a carrier, no need for a overhead crane and much simpler and easier to handle the yarn.

A good dyer will use ONLY AND ONLY USE MANTEX DYESPRIGS and no other dyepackage centre for best results in dyeing.

The pump will get connected to the machine bottom directly with a return valve for circulation.

However, if you are a great engineer, then you would not buy the pump and under each and every dyespindle provide a small pump based on the height of the spindle and number of packages loaded and then make all these pumps run with one invertor. If providing so many pumps is a hassle, then divide the number of spindles and use 3 to 4 pumps of smaller capacity. So, right under the spindle the liquor gets pressurized and all spindles get the same pressure. Otherwise with conventional one monster pump leakage in any one spindle causes a disaster to the full dyelot. Further, if you are still an ingenious designer, then you would rather not pump the dye liquor from the bottom, but from the top of the spindle. All it needs is a flexible hose from the liquor lines which would come from the side of the vessel. Connect with quick coupling the flexible hoses to the top of follow down cap and rush the liquor downwards. Much simpler to force it downwards as against to raise it upwards. But this top thing is practical only for small capacity machines upto 100 kgs.
Always and always use only Unidirectional Flow. This changing flow is another unproven thing. Anything which is consistent always shows better results then one which is changing regularly. These are simple laws of nature, do not get trapped by the marketing laws. Secondly, the flow rate has to be slow with consistent pressure. Never jump to higher flow rates, it only spoils the initial layers of the package.

A good dyer will provide for unlocking the follow down cap without opening the lid with a solenoid pneumatic valve. The pneumatic line can be the supporting pipes acting as the spindle. It will disengage the follow down cap and allow the yarn to relax after the dyeing cycle.

The dyer will provide a valve on the inlet, so that the liquor line from the pump is shut and the air line gets opened and provide a wind tunnel suction fan to dry away the yarn. So, yarns like polyester filament practically come out fully ready to be rewound , without need for hydro extraction and RF dryer.

A good dyer will provide a camera within the machine, to see the coloring effect and capture the color and measure against the standard. May be the spectrophotometer has to be calibrated to see the colors in the wet package form. Camera can always be in an insulated glass box. ( If under sea photography is possible, this is still photography in a vessel )

A good dyer will provide infra red lamps within the machine or dry heat coming from an external source, lowered into the vessel, after completion of the dyeing and initial moistre removal cycle. This will dry out the rem-anent moisture.

Good dyer will paint the outside of the vessel and all the pipes with beautiful pictures. If a bloody double decker in London can have such nice pictures painted over it, then why not your machine. So, when you walk into the department, you get a feeling of walking in a rain forest and not a jungle of pipes and monster looking machine.

A good dyer will make sure that all control cycles are wireless transferred and most important that the final dyeing result is transferred wireless to the Top management, before the machine is even opened. He knows the investment he made is now showing one after another RFT.

Now the Most Important part, the Management of the Dyeing Department : If dyeing is all about recipes and colors, then God had chosen the Gender " F" for such activities. Women see colors more distinctly, they can feel colors, where as for we Men, What the hell is " Mauve " . Women play with recipes day and night and love to alter them to get a better taste. If dyeing is all about cooking colors, then let the Women take over such jobs. They will revolutionize the whole world of colors and for all you know, she will eat the head off the dye makers to get shades, which are not seen. Now go and find the the best looking dame in the town with flair for colors and cooking. ( Check the blog Tastespotting and you would see, how much creativity is there in common man. These food blogs have put Top 5* Hotel chefs to shame .And so much of this unrecognized skill is showing up with a simple handphone camera and a computer connected to the internet, Tastespotting will get extended to all areas of lifestyle one day, where common man creativity will supersede the marketing gimmicks of companies and will become the reference point of design and lifestyle)

Have you ever seen, anyone wearing Greige fabrics, Textiles is all about colors. And more the assortment of colors that you can design , the better the dyer you are and if you are smart enough, you would take a copyright on the damn color.

PLZZZZZZZZZZZ, this is already year 2010. When will the Textile Machine makers wake up and move afar from machines which were designed in year 1850. If the 19th century was an Industrial revolution, then 21 st century is a Digital Revolution.

My simple design is available for commercialization till I get the money and make a machine myself. But the machine described above is which is a combination of dyeing, Hydro extractor, drying, , no carriers, no extra handling and above all the machine works with a material to liquor ratio of 1:2. Cost of making such a machine will be minimal and to this just add the control from Barco or just ask Google or one such nerd to design one for you and download it free and run the machine with your lap top. The control of steam valves, pumps, other valves does not require very sophisticated software, you can do it yourself , if you have some programming knowledge.

After the dyeing and drying cycle, the pneumatic system will lift the yarn colomn and download it on your favorite winding machine. Just ask "Festo" or similar to design the system for you and they would automate the whole plant at no addl. cost.

So, here is a machine, which works on automation and very low M:L ratio and low power, very low effluent and 50% higher productivity.

A good dyer will have enough Heat Exchanger Tubes in the liquor drainage system to capture the heat from the liquor and use in boiler efficiency.A good dyer will use SS 304 grade of steel for his dyeing of polyester and polyester spun yarns and all other man made fibre yarns and reduce the cost of dyeing machine by at least 25%. No average textile engineer knows the difference between the steel composition of American standard 304 grade and American standard 316 grade and the industry follows the code of 316 grade blindly. The Molybdenum percentage of 2% in aisi 316 does help in anti corrosion, but this is only for ship vessels, which are all the time in highly corrosive salt water. In case of yarn dyeing, the salt used for cotton dyeing is still a very small percentage and has a minimal influence on the vessel .
It is upto you to take the risk.But one and every yarn dyer other then Pacific Textiles Group, I have seen ,never questions the dyeing machine and blindly buys the equipment and uses the equipment inefficiently.

Machine maker anyway wants to sell more machines, so why would he advise that the machine will take a higher payload. He is not a dyer, he is a PRESSURIZED VESSEL MAKER, who has added a pump and a control panel to make a machine which dyes yarns. Then there are low performance engineers, who have added a yarn carrier, sub optimally designed to load the yarn into this vessel. After that it is your baby. Have Fun.

This is why I call Yarn Dyeing Machines - Fraud of the century.