Quality & profitability: Proven accuracy offers major benefits for spinners

Quality in yarns depends on a multiplicity of factors, and spinners face the challenge of understanding and interpreting those factors to achieve the best quality-productivity balance.

Every good spinner understands the importance of testing cotton fibre quality. It is the basis for critical decisions which impact on yarn quality and, ultimately, the mills ongoing profitability. The USTER® AFIS PRO 2 fibre testing instrument from Uster Technologies is the ideal process optimisation tool, and its superior performance and accuracy is now proven in a series of independent global trials.

The production of quality cotton yarns is a complex task, so it is vital that test procedures, and instruments used, must be accurate and reliable to have any value in todays demanding textile marketplace. Accuracy, in this context, means conformity with global standard measurements, within accepted tolerances.

For spinners, fibre test results influence choices about which raw material to select and how to process it. Machine settings, production rates and waste levels are all dependent on key fibre parameters being measured and reported as accurately as possible.

Fibre testing instruments such as the latest USTER® AFIS PRO 2 are now viewed as essential tools for determining processing options, but users also need evidence that the data provided is not only accurate, but also can be matched, compared and benchmarked against measurements from others with the same instrument type.

ICA Bremen Round Trials provide independent checks on instrument accuracy

Objective, independent analysis of test performance is the best guarantee of effective results, and the world-renowned cotton authority ICA Bremen offers a regular program of methodical sampling to fulfil this need. The ICA Bremen Round Trials are conducted three times a year, involving as many as 200 textile laboratories worldwide.

Each lab tests a sub-sample of material, the master-sample being tested by ICA, to compare test results from various instrument types. The labs return their results to ICA under a code number, to preserve anonymity. The statistics are evaluated and a report circulated to the participating labs, enabling them to match their test performance against the general pattern.

In this way, the Bremen Round Trials provide a regular check on the accuracy and reliability of instruments used by participants. In the case of USTER, the major instruments involved in the trials are the HVI® test system for cotton fibre classification and the AFIS® process optimisation tool.

Comparisons in key parameters underline superiority of AFIS®

The Bremen Round Trials covering the latest USTER® AFIS PRO 2 instrument enable comparisons with the only major competing product in this category, the Premier Aqura. The trials include over 50 laboratories using AFIS® and about 10 using the Aqura. The AFIS® can test a wider range of parameters than its competitor, so results from the trials are best compared over the two key parameters common to both instruments.

Nep content is the first quality parameter covered in the trials. For AFIS®, the results show fairly stable variations in nep measurement, at an average of about 14 per cent, while the figure for the Aqura is around 23 per cent. The second fibre parameter, short fibre content, again shows the AFIS® with a lower level of variation, at 15 per cent, against about 22 per cent for the competitor.

The Bremen Round Trials thus provide convincing independent evidence of the superior accuracy of the AFIS® versus its competitor, underlining its capability for optimum compatibility of results between different individual instruments. The eventual benefits, in terms of yarn quality delivered to the customer and improved profitability for the spinner, are a direct result of the pro