Casablancas, Fernando

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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fl. 1912 Spain

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Spanish inventor of the first of the high-draft cotton-spinning systems.

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In 1912, Casablancas took out three patents in Britain. The first of these was for putting false twist into textile fibres during the drawing part of spinning. In his next we can find the origins of his interest in his high-draft system, for it contains intermediate sectors or rollers between the usual drawing rollers. It was not until the third patent that there appeared the basis of the modern system with endless inextensible strips of material passing round the rollers to help support the fibres. His first system was for spinning fibres of medium length, giving a much greater draft. This consisted of two aprons around the middle pair of drafting rollers which reached almost to the front ones. The aprons lightly pressed the fibres together in the drafting zone and yet allowed the more-quickly rotating front rollers to pull fibres out of the aprons quite easily. This enabled slivers or rovings to be reduced in thickness more quickly and evenly. In 1913, a further patent showed a development of the apron system where guides made the aprons move in an "S" pattern. Then in 1914 a patent illustrated something similar to the modern layout, while two further patents in the following year contained slightly different layouts. His system was soon applied to both ring frames and the mule, and while it was first applied to cotton, it soon spread to worsted. High-draft spinning was also envisaged by Casablancas and he took out a further patent in 1920 to obtain drafts in a ratio of several hundreds. His principles are used today on some of the most recent open-end spinning frames.

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Bibliography

1912, British patent no. 11,376 (textile fibres with false twist). 1912, British patent no. 11,783.

1912. British patent no. 12,477.

1913. British patent no. 11,613.

1914. British patent no. 19,372 1915. British patent no. 3,366.

1915, British patent no. 14,228.

Further Reading

C.Singer (ed.), 1978, A History of Technology, Vol. 6, Oxford: Clarendon Press (mentions his spinning methods).

RLH