Welker Conditioning Systems

CONDITIONING OF YARNS AND FABRICS

High speed spinning machines generate more friction thus giving additional heat to the yarn. As a result of such heat transfer the yarn moisture content is vaporised and disappears. It is well known that dry yarns have worse properties in subsequent processing. Rising speeds in spinning result in decreased yarn quality for other processes.

Moisture regain becomes essential in the textile industry. For quality reasons it is absolutely important to have even distribution of this recuperated moisture throughout the entire yarn package.

Only the vacuum technology provides the conditions for the required moisture regain. Traditional approaches like conditioning rooms become obsolete for economic reasons. High residual times of up to 24 hours, energy consumption and space requirements with high investment costs are their main disadvantages. WELKER provide state-of- the- art conditioning systems for economic and efficient moisture regain to improve yarn quality.

CONDITIONING WITH SATURATED STEAM

Vacuum generated by high-performance pumps initiates the conditioning cycle inside the autoclave before the WELKER INJECTOR is feeding in the required quantity of saturated steam. Inside the autoclave chamber an atmosphere of low temperature saturated steam is immediately formed in equilibrium with vacuum. The deep vacuum makes steam to penetrate deeply into the yarn packages.

The temperature difference between steam and yarn causes steam to condense inside the yarn package. Moisture is absorbed by the yarn and the package is heated up. Prior to wrapping the yarn needs to be cooled down after the cycle.

CONDITIONING EFFICIENCY: HOW TO CHECK?

We recommend to check weight 30 minutes after the cooling period, at the end of the conditioning, and prior to wrapping packaging. Efficiency is the percentage of weight increase compared to yarn weight before conditioning.

Fields of Application

• WELKER Conditioning Systems are designed for humidification in the temperature range between 50 and 70° C. Saturated steam in high vacuum cares for optimal moisture regain in any application
• WELKER Systems are ideal for conditioning waxed yarns. We recommend to use waxes with melting points not higher than 65° C.
• WELKER Conditioning Systems allow heat setting at temperatures up to 95° C (105°C) thus offering an excellent price/ performance ratio.
• Pressure Range -1 bar to 0 bar
• Temperature Range 45° to 95°C

Advantages of conditioning

For Spinning mills:

• Increase of the moisture content of the yarn,
• Increase of yarn quality, thus providing better market position against competitors with dried out yarns.

For Knitting mills:

• Reduction of fly and dust up to 50%
• Decrease of needle breaks up to 25-35%
• Increase of efficiency up to 10%
• Decrease of thread tension and machine downtimes
• Support of dimensional stability of knitted goods
• Improvement of feel and volume of the goods
• Improvement of friction values
• Improvement of uniformity and improved appearance
• Reduction of electrostatic effects

For Weaving mills:

• Reduction of fly and dust up to 30-40%
• Decrease of thread breaks during the weft insertion, depending on the insert system, up to 15%
• Increase of efficiency up to 2%
• Improvement of feel and volume of the goods
• Improvement of friction values
• Improvement of uniformity of the goods
• Further improvement of efficiency, if conditioned yarn is used in warping room

INTELLIGENT CONTROL

All WELKER systems are equipped with overheating protection systems and fully automatic DOSITRON 18 programmable SPC control with digital data logger and visualisation of both process and production status on a touch screen control panel. The IPS - Intelligent Programming System helps the operator to control the machine and continuously informs the actual status. The data can be transferred to a PC via a flash card.