Card C 70: A key to success for Luckyfield

For many years, Luckyfield has utilised Rieter C 4, C 51 and C 60 cards. These cards meet the full expectations of the customer in terms of economical production and quality.

Luckyfield Yichang, a customer of Rieter, has an expanding customer base and faced an increasing demand for high quality ring-spun yarn. With the latest generation of cards, C 70, the company was able to boost its production significantly.

Luckyfield Yichang is located in Yichang City, Hubei Province, China. The company is very well known in its province as the leading producer of combed cotton ring spun yarn with a high and constant quality (5 per cent USTER Statistic level). Luckyfield operates 80,000 ring spindles. All fibre and spinning preparation machines are from Rieter. Over the years the customer has invested in four generations of Rieter cards which are all in production.

The challenge
For Luckyfield as a high quality combed cotton yarn spinner, it is important to set the quality parameters at the beginning of the spinning process. In order to achieve this, already at an early stage, Luckyfield decided to use Rieter cards to lay the foundation for the yarn quality. Luckyfield’s customers appreciate the high quality of the yarn. Along with an expanding customer base, the required production increased continuously. So it was important for the customer to produce the same high quality with every new card generation at a higher production level.

The solution
For many years, Luckyfield has utilised Rieter C 4, C 51 and C 60 cards. These cards meet the full expectations of the customer in terms of economical production and quality. Based on the excellent experience with those previous Rieter card models, Luckyfield decided in 2012 to purchase four sets of C 70 cards with the Integrated Grinding System IGS (IGS classic and IGS top). C 70 cards with an IGS system secure the quality at an excellent level and require little maintenance. The new C 70 cards produce 90 kg/h of sliver at the same quality level as the C 60 card at 75 kg/h, the C 51 at 50 kg/h and C 4 at 40 kg/h.

The benefits for Luckyfield Yichang: Increased production at minimal maintenance costs:

Every new generation of Rieter cards realised a significant increase in production (see table, Fig 1). On the same machine space the sliver production was doubled. This led to lower investment in the building.

With the IGS system on the C 70 card, the customer is able to produce up to 3,800 tonnes of sliver with one set of wires and flats before they need replacing. Since the commissioning of the C 70 in 2012, the customer exchanged the wires and flats only once. This is far above the industry standard of around 1,000 tonne per set of wires.

The savings are tremendous as regards the wire maintenance and low downtime for wire. Customer’s statement

“We are a loyal partner of Rieter. We now have four generations of card from C 4, C 51, C 60 to C 70 in use. Rieter cards are the best in the world. We will keep on buying Rieter cards when we have a new project,” said Shengwu Yi, Mill Manager of Luckyfield Yichang.

Rieter is the world’s leading supplier of systems for short-staple fibre spinning. Based in Winterthur (Switzerland), the company develops and manufactures machinery, systems and components used to convert natural and manmade fibres and their blends into yarns. Rieter is the only supplier worldwide to cover spinning preparation processes and all four end-spinning processes currently established on the market. Rieter is also a market leader in precision winding machines. With 18 manufacturing locations in ten countries, the company employs a global workforce of some 5,250 employees, about 20 per cent of whom are based in Switzerland.