Cotton Growing and Harvesting
Cotton is a plant that has a fluffy, white bulb of fibrous material which holds the seeds. This bulb is what we know as cotton. To the plant, it is one way to ensure more cotton grows come the next growing season. This fibrous part of the cotton plant is harvested today by large machines that reap these cotton bulbs from several plants at a time. The cotton harvest is then balled and shipped to a plant where the seeds are removed. This is the first step in making the cotton bulb into cloth.
Cotton Gin
A cotton gin extracts the seeds from the cotton at the gin. This process turns the cotton into what is called clean cotton. Prior to this, it is called seed cotton. After the cotton is stripped of seed it is further cleaned and baled. Then it is taken to another facility where the cotton bales are mixed together. Various grades of cotton can be mixed to produce certain types of yarn and cloth. Once blended, the cotton is fed into several pickers that clean the cotton and remove excess fibers. The cotton is then carded by a carding machine.
Yarning and Spinning
The next phase is to turn the cotton into yarn or string which can be woven into cloth. In this process, cotton from the picker machines is turned into slivers which are further treated and processed to be turned into various types of yarns. Several strands or slivers of cotton are then stretched and combined before they are spun into the final thread. The spinning machine is the device which turns the cotton slivers into threads.
Weaving
After the cotton is spun into thread form, it is treated with dyes or chemicals as needed. It is then shipped to a loom or weaving plant where the threads are loaded into a large mechanical loom. Here the threads are woven into large sheets of cloth. Several yards of fabric per second are typically created at these industrial mills, and it is the final step in turning cotton into cloth.
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