Fabric Definitions — definitions of fabrics, cloths, laces and textile materials from Apparel Search
Open-end spinning is a technology for creating yarn without using a spindle; it is also known as break spinning or rotor spinning. Sliver from the card goes into the rotor, is spun into yarn and comes out wrapped on a bobbin ready for the next step, with no roving stage. The system is much less labor-intensive and faster than ring spinning, with rotor speeds up to 140,000 rpm, but open-end yarns are more coarse than ring-spun yarns.
Note: Open-end yarns are more coarse than ringspun yarns.
Open-end spinning is a technology for creating yarn without using a spindle. It is also known as break spinning or rotor spinning.
The principle behind open-end spinning is similar to that of a clothes dryer spinning full of sheets. If you could open the door and pull out a sheet, it would spin together as you pulled it out. Sliver from the card goes into the rotor, is spun into yarn and comes out, wrapped up on a bobbin, all ready to go to the next step. There is no roving stage or re-packaging on an auto-coner. This system is much less labor-intensive and faster than ring spinning with rotor speeds up to 140,000 rpm. The Rotor design is the key to the operation of the open-ended spinners. Each type of fiber may require a different rotor design for optimal product quality and processing speed.
It was invented and developed in Czechoslovakia in Výzkumný ústav bavlnářský / Cotton Research Institute in Ústí nad Orlicí in 1963.
One disadvantage of open-end spinning is that it is limited to coarser counts, another is the structure of the yarn itself with fibers less in parallel compared to ring-spun yarns, for example, consequently cloth made from open-end yarn has a "fuzzier" feel and poorer wear resistance.
You should also take some time to learn about ringspun yarns & fabrics.
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Ring spinning twists yarn onto a spindle package that must be stopped, doffed and rewound; open-end spinning removes the spindle and with it the bottleneck. Because the rotor is small and light it can turn at up to 140,000 rpm, far beyond ring-spindle speeds, and because yarn is delivered continuously onto a large bobbin, the roving stage before spinning and the auto-coner rewinding after it both disappear. Fewer stages mean less labor, less floor space and less energy per kilogram of yarn — the definition summary that the system is much less labor-intensive and faster is the entire commercial case. The trade is quality range: the process handles coarser counts and robust fibers best, and the yarn structure it produces, with a less parallel fiber core and surface wrapper fibers, caps the fineness and surface quality it can reach. Mills therefore run both systems side by side, allocating yarn orders by count and end use rather than treating one as the replacement of the other.
Open-end yarn found its markets where its properties are advantages or irrelevancies: denim weft, towels, fleece and knit basics, sheeting and workwear fabrics — high-volume cloths in coarser counts where a slightly fuzzier hand is acceptable, absorbency is even improved by the yarn open structure, and cost per metre decides competitiveness. Ring-spun yarn keeps the fine counts, the smooth shirtings, the high-strength sewing and premium knitwear where parallel fibers, evenness and wear resistance are paid for. For fabric buyers the distinction surfaces in specification sheets and in hand: two otherwise identical cotton cloths, one ring-spun and one open-end, differ measurably in smoothness, pilling and service life. Open-end spinning, invented in 1963 and refined through rotor design for each fiber type, is thus best defined as ring spinning economic counterpart — the same product category, yarn, made by breaking the fiber stream and re-twisting it in a rotor, trading fineness for speed.
Card sliver is fed into a fast-spinning rotor, where centrifugal force lays the separated fibers into a groove around the rotor wall. A yarn end introduced into the rotor picks up the fiber ring and twists it into yarn as it is drawn out — the analogy given is pulling a sheet from a spinning dryer and finding it twists together as it comes. The yarn leaves wound on a bobbin, with no roving stage or re-packaging on an auto-coner.
The rotor process is limited to coarser counts, and its fiber arrangement differs: fibers in open-end yarn lie less parallel than in ring-spun yarn, with wrapper fibers around the core. Cloth made from open-end yarn consequently has a fuzzier feel and poorer wear resistance than ring-spun cloth, balanced by the yarn much lower production cost.
In 1963, in Czechoslovakia, at the Cotton Research Institute in Usti nad Orlici. Rotor design is the key to the operation — each type of fiber may require a different rotor design for optimal product quality and processing speed — and rotor speeds reach up to 140,000 rpm.