Abstract
A brief review is given of the difficulties which are encountered when high-speed photography is applied to textiles. Examples are then taken from various sections of the industry.
Some of the difficulties are associated with the basic textile material in which single fibres with a length/diameter ratio of 250 or more are to be photographed against a background of other fibres. In order to reveal single fibre movements under such conditions, particular care must be taken with the direction of illumination and it has been found that side lighting is the most suitable. The use of filament lamps can cause excessive heating of the subject and this cannot be ignored, since changes may occur in the physical and frictional properties of the fibres.
Since in a number of machinery studies the operation is cyclic, it is frequently necessary to compromise in the selection of the camera speed between high speeds for the detailed study of a part of the cycle and low speeds for the study of a number of cycles.
The camera being used at the British Rayon Research Association is a Fastax W.F.3. Applications to spinning (fibre orientation in card webs, filament breakage on the Stains Direct Spinning Machine), winding (twist movement on cone winding), weaving (weft feeler mechanism and automatic weft changing devices) and knitting (circular knitting and warp knitting movements) are given with suggestions for further work.