The Roberts loom was a cast-iron power loom introduced by Richard Roberts in 1830. It was the first loom that was more viable [ how? ] than a hand loom and was easily adjustable and reliable, which led to its widespread use in the Lancashire cotton industry.
Roberts was born at Llanymynech, on the border between England and Wales. He was the son of William Roberts, a shoemaker, who also kept the New Bridge tollgate. Roberts was educated by the parish priest, and early found employment with a boatman on the Ellesmere Canal and later at the local limestone quarries. He received some instruction in drawing from Robert Bough, a road surveyor, who was working under Thomas Telford.
He was responsible for developing ever more precise machine tools, working eventually from 15 Deansgate, Manchester. Here he worked on improving textile machinery. He patented the cast-iron loom in 1822 and in 1830 patented the self-acting mule thus revolutionising the production of both the spinning and weaving industries.
The major components of the loom are the warp beam, heddles, harnesses, shuttle, reed and takeup roll. In the loom, yarn processing includes shedding, picking, battening and taking-up operations.
The Roberts loom of 1830 incorporated ideas embodied in an 1822 patent.
The frame of the loom was cast iron. There were two side frames cast as single pieces. The three cross tails were machined for an accurate assembly. The great arched rail at the top supports the healds. The front and back cross rails bifurcate at each side to give a larger binding surface. [1]
The warp passes from the warp beam, passes over a friction guide roller, where it horizontally passes through the loom to a breastbeam. Here it turns vertically to the cloth beam. Even tension is essential as any variation will lead to broken threads. As the warp beam empties its effective diameter changes making the warp slacker- tension is maintained by adding a wooden pulley to the beam, around which are two turns of rope that are attached to mill weights- thus retarding the beam through friction. The cloth beam bears a toothed wheel which works a pinion. A ratchet wheel is attached with a click level to take up the slack in the cloth. This was Roberts invention.
The heddles are of standard construction. They are arranged in groups of four, obviously even threads and odd must go up and down alternatively but two heddles are used for the evens and two for the odds so adjacent threads do not rub. The lower end of the heddle leaves is attached to treadles or marches. These are depressed by cam referred to as eccentrics..
The loom is powered by a leather steam-belt which drives the driving shaft. Here there is a flywheel to smooth the motion and a crank mechanism to drive the battens (swords) and a toothed wheel. This engages a second shaft known as the tappet shaft or wiper shaft whose job is to lower the treadles and throw the shuttle. This turns half the speed of the driving shaft, so its toothed wheel is twice the size.
The shuttle is thrown by two levers attached to the side frame, but activated by a friction roller on the tappet shaft. As the shuttle enters the shuttle-box at the end of its travel, it depresses a lever which acts as a brake. If this lever is not depressed then the loom is stopped. [2]
The Roberts was made at a time when the power loom industry was set to expand. Until this moment, hand looms were more common than power looms. The reliable Roberts loom was quickly adopted and again it was the spinning side that was short of capacity. Roberts then addressed this, with the construction of a self-acting (automatic) spinning mule. Essentially, textile production was no longer a skilled craft but an industrial process that could be manned by semi-skilled labour. Mule spinning became the man's occupation, and weaving a girl's occupation.[ citation needed ]
| Year | 1803 | 1820 | 1829 | 1833 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Looms | 2,400 | 14,650 | 55,500 | 100,000 |
A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but the basic function is the same.
Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft, woof, or filling. The method in which these threads are interwoven affects the characteristics of the cloth. Cloth is usually woven on a loom, a device that holds the warp threads in place while filling threads are woven through them. A fabric band that meets this definition of cloth can also be made using other methods, including tablet weaving, back strap loom, or other techniques that can be done without looms.
The spinning jenny is a multi-spindle spinning frame, and was one of the key developments in the industrialisation of textile manufacturing during the early Industrial Revolution. It was invented in 1764-1765 by James Hargreaves in Stan hill, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in England.
A power loom is a mechanized loom, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. The first power loom was designed and patented in 1785 by Edmund Cartwright. It was refined over the next 47 years until a design by the Howard and Bullough company made the operation completely automatic. This device was designed in 1834 by James Bullough and William Kenworthy, and was named the Lancashire loom.
In the manufacture of cloth, warp and weft are the two basic components in weaving to transform thread and yarn into textile fabrics. The vertical warp yarns are held stationary in tension on a loom (frame) while the horizontal weft is drawn through the warp thread. In the terminology of weaving, each warp thread is called a warp end ; a pick is a single weft thread that crosses the warp thread.
A dobby loom, or dobbie loom, is a type of floor loom that controls all the warp threads using a device called a dobby.
A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
The flying shuttle is a type of weaving shuttle. It was a pivotal advancement in the mechanisation of weaving during the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution, and facilitated the weaving of considerably broader fabrics, enabling the production of wider textiles. Moreover, its mechanical implementation paved the way for the introduction of automatic machine looms.
Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines in the United Kingdom. The main drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron founding, steam power, oil drilling, the discovery of electricity and its many industrial applications, the telegraph and many others. Railroads, steamboats, the telegraph and other innovations massively increased worker productivity and raised standards of living by greatly reducing time spent during travel, transportation and communications.
Textile manufacturing is a major industry. It is largely based on the conversion of fibre into yarn, then yarn into fabric. These are then dyed or printed, fabricated into cloth which is then converted into useful goods such as clothing, household items, upholstery and various industrial products.
The spinning mule is a machine used to spin cotton and other fibres. They were used extensively from the late 18th to the early 20th century in the mills of Lancashire and elsewhere. Mules were worked in pairs by a minder, with the help of two boys: the little piecer and the big or side piecer. The carriage carried up to 1,320 spindles and could be 150 feet (46 m) long, and would move forward and back a distance of 5 feet (1.5 m) four times a minute.
Cotton-spinning machinery is machines which process prepared cotton roving into workable yarn or thread. Such machinery can be dated back centuries. During the 18th and 19th centuries, as part of the Industrial Revolution cotton-spinning machinery was developed to bring mass production to the cotton industry. Cotton spinning machinery was installed in large factories, commonly known as cotton mills.
In weaving, the shed is the temporary separation between upper and lower warp yarns through which the weft is woven. The shed is created to make it easy to interlace the weft into the warp and thus create woven fabric. Most types of looms have some sort of device which separates some of the warp threads from the others. This separation is called the shed, and allows for a shuttle carrying the weft thread to move through the shed perpendicular to the warp threads. Which threads are raised and which are lowered are changed after each pass of the shuttle.
A heddle is an integral part of a loom. Each thread in the warp passes through a heddle, which is used to separate the warp threads for the passage of the weft. The typical heddle is made of cord or wire and is suspended on a shaft of a loom. Each heddle has an eye in the center where the warp is threaded through. As there is one heddle for each thread of the warp, there can be near a thousand heddles used for fine or wide warps. A handwoven tea-towel will generally have between 300 and 400 warp threads and thus use that many heddles.
The Lancashire Loom was a semi-automatic power loom invented by James Bullough and William Kenworthy in 1842. Although it is self-acting, it has to be stopped to recharge empty shuttles. It was the mainstay of the Lancashire cotton industry for a century.
Textile manufacturing is one of the oldest human activities. The oldest known textiles date back to about 5000 B.C. In order to make textiles, the first requirement is a source of fibre from which a yarn can be made, primarily by spinning. The yarn is processed by knitting or weaving to create cloth. The machine used for weaving is the loom. Cloth is finished by what are described as wet process to become fabric. The fabric may be dyed, printed or decorated by embroidering with coloured yarns.
A reed is part of a weaving loom, and resembles a comb or a frame with many vertical slits. It is used to separate and space the warp threads, to guide the shuttle's motion across the loom, and to push the weft threads into place. In most floor looms with, the reed is securely held by the beater. Floor looms and mechanized looms both use a beater with a reed, whereas Inkle weaving and tablet weaving do not use reeds.
Bradford Industrial Museum, established 1974 in Moorside Mills, Eccleshill, Bradford, United Kingdom, specializes in relics of local industry, especially printing and textile machinery, kept in working condition for regular demonstrations to the public. There is a Horse Emporium in the old canteen block plus a shop in the mill, and entry is free of charge.
A weaving shed is a distinctive type of mill developed in the early 1800s in Lancashire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire to accommodate the new power looms weaving cotton, silk, woollen and worsted. A weaving shed can be a stand-alone mill, or a component of a combined mill. Power looms cause severe vibrations requiring them to be located on a solid ground floor. In the case of cotton, the weaving shed needs to remain moist. Maximum daylight is achieved, by the sawtooth "north-facing roof lights".
William Horrocks, a cotton manufacturer of Stockport built an early power loom in 1803, based on the principles of Cartwright but including some significant improvements to cloth take up and in 1813 battening.
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