THE 20TH-CENTURY REVOLUTION IN TEXTILE MACHINES AND PROCESSES. PART 2: TEXTURED YARNS AND OTHER TECHNOLOGIES

Notes and references

• Brunnschweiler, D. and J.W.S. Hearle (eds), Polyester: 50 Years of Achievement (Manchester: The Textile Institute, 1993).
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• In downtwisting, the supply package is rotated.
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• Except for a transient at the start, it is impossible to insert true twist by a rotation in the middle of the yarn. The alternate twists of Figure 2b cancel out.
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• Piller, B., Bulked Yarns: Production, Processing and Properties, translated from the Czech by O. Steinerova (Manchester: Textile Trade Press, 1973).
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• See the Appendix for an account of the extensive patent litigation on these patents and the later double heater patents.
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• Hearle, J.W.S., H. Hollick and D.K. Wilson, Yarn Texturing Technology (Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing, 2001).
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• Throwing is the term used for twisting silk filaments, which are discontinuous but very long, into silk yarns. The operators are known as throwsters and are concentrated in places like Macclesfield, which is why this became a location for early texturing operations.
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• Millington, J., in Brunnschweiler and Hearle, ref. 1.
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• Anyone who has studied Strength of Materials will know about the Euler buckling criterion. When a rod is subject to a high compressive load, it buckles, at first into a planar wave form and then into a helical form. If the rod is subject to torque (twisting force), less compressive load is needed to cause buckling and, at high twists, tension is needed to stop buckling.
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• There was one use of undrawn nylon: in arrester nets for planes landing on ships. The high draw meant that a large amount of energy could be absorbed in a gradual slow down.
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• Chemstrand, Textured Yarns of Chemstrand Nylon (Alabama, USA: Chemstrand, Decatur, 1963). Chemstrand, Textured Yarn Technology (Monsanto Company, USA, 1967).
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• Apologies for including one equation!
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• The rotational speed is approximate. Unlike the earlier spindles where the yarn is forced to rotate at the spindle speed, friction twisting is not a positive action. There must be slip as the yarn moves forward over the discs and hence there must also be rotational slip. There has been theoretical work involving vector diagrams on the mechanics of friction twisting, see Hearle et al., ref. 6.
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• Hearle, J.W.S., P. Grosberg and S. Backer, Structural Mechanics of Fibres, Yarns and Fabrics (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1969).
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• Hearle et al., ref. 6.
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• Weft knitting is the better-known process in which the knitting yarns course back and forth or round and round across the width of the fabric, forming loops with the previous course. In warp knitting, the parallel yarns of the warp inter-loop with their neighbours along the length of the fabric.
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• There was a brief intermediate stage of digitally controlled card cutters.
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• The patent office proceedings and law suits lasted a long time from the first Fluflon patent. A paper in the American University Law Review (34, 729), A practical guide for proving fraud on the Patent and Trade Mark Office: J. P. Stevens & Co v. Lex Tex Ltd, noted that ‘the procedural history of the Lex Tex litigation extends over fifteen years and involves over fifty parties’.
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• See, for example, <http://openjurist.org/498/f2d/271/yarn-v-leesona>; <https://law.resource.org/…/541/541.F2d.1127.74-3699.74-3695.74-3>; <www.pattmcoprlaw.com/02CASES.htm>; <bulk.resource.org/…/822.F2d.1047.86-1377.86-1375.86-1359.html>; <www.bannerwitcoff.com/docs/library/articles/disc.pdf> [last accessed 20 January 2014].
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• 183 U.S.P.Q. 65. In re YARN PROCESSING PATENT VALIDITY LITIGATION. SAUQUOIT FIBERS COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. LEESONA CORPORATION et al., Defendants-Appellants. KAYSER-ROTH CORPORATION (in its own name and d/b/a Kayser-Roth Hosiery Companyand Kayser-Roth Hosiery Co., Inc.), Plaintiff-Appellee, v. LEESONA CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellant. LEESONA CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The DUPLAN CORPORATION et al., Defendants-Appellees. No. 73-2420. United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit. July 29, 1974. 183 U.S.P.Q. 65. In re YARN PROCESSING PATENT VALIDITY LITIGATION. SAUQUOIT FIBERS COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. LEESONA CORPORATION et al., Defendants-Appellants. KAYSER-ROTH CORPORATION (in its own name and d/b/a Kayser-Roth Hosiery Companyand Kayser-Roth Hosiery Co., Inc.), Plaintiff-Appellee, v. LEESONA CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellant. LEESONA CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The DUPLAN CORPORATION et al., Defendants-Appellees. No. 73–2420. United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit. July 29, 1974.
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• 541 F.2d 1127, 192 U.S.P.Q. 241, 194 U.S.P.Q. 121, 1976-2 Trade Cases 61,147. In re YARN PROCESSING PATENT VALIDITY LITIGATION. SAUQUOIT FIBERS COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. LEESONA CORPORATION et al., Defendants-Appellants. LEX TEX LTD., INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v HIALEAH KNITTING MILLS, INC., et al., Defendants-Appellees. LEX TEX LTD., INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNIVERSAL TEXTURED YARNS, INC., and G. Allen Mebane, Individually, Defendants-Appellees. LEX TEX LTD., INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CONCORDIA MANUFACTURING CO., INC., and Paul O. Boghossian, Jr., Individually, Defendants-Appellees. LEX TEX LTD., INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BURLINGTON INDUSTRIES, INC., Defendant-Appellee. LEX TEX LTD., INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GOLD MILLS, INC., Defendant-Appellee. Nos. 74-3589, 74-3695 to 74-3699. United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit. Nov. 5, 1976. As Modified on Denial of Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Feb. 3, 1977.
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• A technical expert has a double role. As a witness, evidence should be true and unbiased, but in preparation of the case advice is given to the client on the interpretation of the technology, what tests should be run, etc. A Fluflon machine was supplied to UMIST, so that tests could be carried out. On another occasion, I spent a week running tests at a factory in Canada. In this way, one learns a lot about the technology.
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• I wrote many affidavits but never gave evidence in Court.
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• This was my final involvement in the textured yarn patent litigation. In India, I made affidavits but the trial petered out after repeated delays; in London, DuPont and ICI settled a few months before the trial came on.
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• I wrote a long affidavit when the patents were re-examined and then re-issued by the US patent office. A colleague gave evidence in a trial in Florida which Lex Tex won. The verdict was overturned on the technicality that the Weiss and DaGasso patents had not been cited. They had been cited in other applications by Stoddard and Seem. Lex Tex then sued the patent attorney who had prepared the application and won damages.
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• An intriguing point in the patent litigation was whether the same helical form as shown in contraction from the tensioned straight yarn also formed on pulling out a yarn from the fully contracted state. It does not. The pig-tails are pulled out one by one until the yarn is almost fully extended.
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