List of Top Ranked Textile Engineering Universities in UnitedKingdom(UK) | Textile Engineering Colleges in United Kingdom(UK) |Garment Colleges / Fashion Colleges / Apparel Colleges in England

There are many textile, apparel, fashion, garments, design colleges, universities in United Kingdom(UK). But top ranked and most famous textile universities are enlisted below:

1. Bolton University:  

Bolton University is one of the most popular and ancient university of United Kingdom. . The contact address of Bolton University is: Deane Campus, Deane Road, Bolton, BL3 5AB. For course details please contact to the University by: Tel: +44 (0)1204 903105 and you can email them to at: T.Rowe@bolton.ac.uk. Tel: +44 (0)1204 903903, Email: enquiries@bolton.ac.uk

At a glance
Bolton University
Deane Road
Bolton, Greater Manchester BL3
+44 01204 903 000
bolton.ac.uk

2. The University of Manchester: 

The University of Manchester is very renowned for the Textile Engineering Courses and Degrees. They provide several Textile Diploma, Honors and Ms.c Degree in Campus based and online format within part time & Full time facilities.

At a glance
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester, M13 9PL
+44 (0) 161 306 6000
manchester.ac.uk

3.The University of Leeds:

The University of Leeds is another famous university for textile engineering.

At a glance

The University of Leeds
2 Great George St.
City Centre
Leeds LS1 3BR
+44 0113 243 1751
leeds.ac.uk
4.Loughborough University:
Loughborough, Leicestershire, England,
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/

5.Cardonald College:
Mosspark Drive Glasgow G52 3AY, United Kingdom
0141 272 3332
www.cardonald.ac.uk/ 

Knitting Action of the Plain Straight Bar Frame

Figure.A: Shows the cross-section of the knitting head containing the following elements:

A. Bearded needle, having a cranked end for location in the tricked and drilled needle bar.

B. Sinker – only one between every other needle space – with a reinforced back and, at the front, a ‘catch’ to sink the yarn around the needles, and a ‘neb’ to separate the old and new loops until knock-over.

C. Divider, occupying each remaining space, usually having the same shaped front as the sinker but with an extended tail at the back.

D. Knocking-over bit – one directly beneath each sinker and divider – having a ‘throat’ for holding the loops and a ‘nose’ for knocking-over.

E. Needle bar, having a compound horizontal and vertical movement.

F. Striking jack, fulcrummed at its lower end, each one with its ‘nose’ resting on a sinker back, and a ‘spring’ exerting pressure on its ‘tail’.

G. Catch bar, extending the full width of the knitting head, having forward and backward, as well as vertical, movement.

H. Yarn carrier, which traverses in alternate directions across the head from one course to the next – up to six carriers may be available.The carrier is connected to a reciprocating carrier rail by friction, and when the carrier is arrested by its carrier stop, the carrier rail completes its full traverse, driven by the coulier cam and punching through the carrier friction.

J. Falling bar, which is a stop that cushions the advance of the sinkers and dividers.

Statistical Quality Control(S.Q.C) | Function of Statistical QualityControl(S.Q.C) | The Significance of Statistical Quality Control(S.Q.C)in the Textile Industry

Statistical Quality Control(S.Q.C)
It is the application of statistical tools in the manufacturing process for the purpose of quality control. In SQC technique attempt is made to seek out systematic causes of variation as soon as they occur so that the actual variation may be supposed to be due to the guranted random causes.

Statistical quality control refers to the use of statistical methods in the monitoring and maintaining of the quality of products and services. 

Basic Categories of Statistical Quality Control(S.Q.C):

All the tools of SQC are helpful in evaluating the quality of services. SQC uses different tools to analyze quality problem.

1) Descriptive Statistics
2) Statistical Process Control (SPC)
3) Acceptance Sampling

1. Descriptive Statistics:

Descriptive Statistics involves describing quality characteristics and relationships.

2. Statistical process control (SPC):
The application of statistical techniques to determine whether a process is functioning as desired

3. Acceptance Sampling: 

The application of statistical techniques to determine whether a population of items should be accepted or rejected based on inspection of a sample of those items.

Variations of Statistical Quality Control(S.Q.C):

1. Allowable or cause variation
2. Assignable or preventable variation

Function of Statistical Quality Control(S.Q.C):

1. Evaluation of quality standards of incomeing material, product process and finished goods.
2. Judging the conformity of the process to establish standards taking suitable action , when deviation are noted.
3. Evaluation of optimum quality, obtainable under given condition.
4. Improvement of quality and productivity by process control and experimentation.

Main purpose of Statistical Quality Control(S.Q.C):

The main purpose of Statistical Quality Control(S.Q.C) is to divide statistical method for separating allowable variation from preventable variation. 

The Significance of Statistical Quality Control(S.Q.C) in the Textile Industry:

1. The expected quality of product can be produced and hence customers satisfaction can be achieved which brings higher profit.
2. It is very easy to separate allowable variation from the preventable variation by this.
3. It ensures an early detection of faults in process and hence minimum wastage.
4. With its help one can easily defect the impact of chance in production process in the change in quality.
5. It ensures overall co-ordination.
6. It can be use in the interpretation control chart.

Crochet Machine | Knitting Elements of a Crochet Machine

The Crochet Machine
In hand crocheting, a hook is used to draw a new loop through the old loop with the chains of loops being joined together at intervals. On crochet machines, the warp chains are separate from the weft inlay and it is the latter threads that join the chaining wales to each other. 

Knitting Elements of a Crochet Machine

• A single horizontal needle bar whose simple reciprocating action can be used to operate individually-tricked latch, carbine or embroidery needles. The patent or carbine bearded needle is used for fine structures and has a sideways crimped beard placed in a permanently-pressed position. Although warp threads can only be fed into the beard from the left (necessitating a unidirec-tional closed overlap), the old overlaps are automatically cleared and landed by the movement of the needle. It is still the most frequently used needle, achieving speeds up to 2500 rpm. Reduced machine speed and high needle wear make its use uneconomical for knitting single end cotton yarns.

• No sinkers; instead a fixed hold-back bar is fitted in front of the knock-over verge to prevent the fabric moving out with the needles. 

Knitting Elements of a Crochet Machine

• Closed lap pillar stitches and inlay threads controlled and supplied as separate warp and weft respectively. Each needle is lapped from below by its own warp guide, which is clipped to a bar whose automatic one-needle overlap and return and underlap shog is fixed and is controlled from an eccentric cam whilst its upwards and downwards swing is derived from a rocker-shaft. The warp yarn is often placed low at the front of the machine. 

• The weft yarn, often placed above and towards the back of the machine, supplying the carrier tubes, which are clipped to the spring-loaded inlay bars.These bars are fitted above the needle bar and are shogged at the rate of one link per course, from pattern chains around a drum at one end of the machine.There are usually up to two warp guide bars and up to 16 weft inlay bars, which may be electronically controlled.

• Special attachments are available for producing fancy effects such as cut or uncut fringe edges, pile, braiding (equivalent to fall-plate) and snail shell designs.

Crochet machines, with their simple construction, ease of pattern and width changing, and use of individual yarn packages or beams provide the opportunity for short runs on coarse- or fine-gauge fancy and open-work structures and edgings, as well as the specialist production of wide fancy fabrics or narrow elastic laces.

Knitting Action of the Compound Needle Warp Knitting Machine | KnittingAction of the Compound Needle Tricot Machine

Needle rise and guide bar swing: 

With the sinkers forward holding down the fabric, the hooks and tongues rise, with the hook rising faster, until the head of the latter is level with the guide holes and is open.The guides then swing through to the back of the machine.

2. The overlap and return swing:
The guides shog for the overlap and swing to the front of the machine; immediately, the hooks and the tongues start to descend with the tongues descending more slowly, thus closing the hooks.

Fig.  Knitting action of a compound needle tricot machine

3. Landing and knock-over:
The sinkers start to withdraw as the needles descend so that the old loop is landed onto the closed hook and then knocked-over as it descends below the sinker belly. At this point the underlap occurs before the needles begin their upward rise and the sinkers move forward to hold down the fabric.

The Karl Mayer tricot model HKS 2–3 E is designed to knit elastic fabrics and has a maximum speed of 3300 cpm with reduced noise levels and energy consumption.The vertical staggered arrangement of the guide bars enables the stroke to be reduced.The bars are hollow section which reduces their weight and expansion due to heat.

Features of the Latch Needle

Latch Needle

Fact and fiction envelopes the invention of the latch needle in a similar manner to that of the bearded needle. Pierre Jeandeau patented the first latch needle (also known as the tumbler needle) in 1806 but there is no evidence of its practical use.There is also no evidence that the pivoting of a broken pocket knife blade led to the development of the latch spoon.

The latch needle has nine main features (Fig. A):

1 The hook, which draws and retains the new loop.

2 The slot or saw cut, which receives the latch-blade (not illustrated).

3 The cheeks or slot walls, which are either punched or riveted to fulcrum the latch blade (not illustrated).

4 The rivet, which may be plain or threaded.This has been dispensed with on most plate metal needles, by pinching in the slot walls to retain the latch blade.

5 The latch-blade, which locates the latch in the needle.

6 The latch spoon, which is an extension of the blade, and bridges the gap between the hook and the stem covering the hook when closed, as shown in broken lines.

7 The stem, which carries the loop in the clearing or rest position.

8 The butt, which enables the needle to be reciprocated when contacted by cam profiles on either side of it, forming a track. Double-ended purl type needles have a hook at each end; whilst one hook knits, the inactive hook is controlled as a butt by a cam-reciprocated element called a slider.

9 The tail, which is an extension below the butt, giving additional support to the needle and keeping the needle in its trick.

Fig.A. Main features of the latch needle.

Transfer Printing Process | Advantages/Disadvantages of TransferPrinting

Transfer printing is the term used to describe textile and related printing processes in which the design is first printed on to a flexible nontextile substrate and later transferred by a separate process to a textile. It may be asked why this devious route should be chosen instead of directly printing the fabric. The reasons are largely commercial but, on occasion, technical as well and are based on the following considerations.

1. Designs may be printed and stored on a relatively cheap and nonbulky substrate such as paper, and printed on to the more expensive textile with rapid response to sales demand.

2. The production of short-run repeat orders is much easier by transfer processes than it is by direct printing.

3. The design may be applied to the textile with relatively low skill input and low reject rates.

4. Stock volume and storage costs are lower when designs are held on paper rather than on printed textiles.

5. Certain designs and effects can be produced only by the use of transfers (particularly on garments or garment panels).

6. Many complex designs can be produced more easily and accurately on paper than on textiles.

7. Most transfer-printing processes enable textile printing to be carried out using simple, relatively inexpensive equipment with modest space requirements, without effluent production or any need for washing-off.

Against these advantages may be set the relative lack of flexibility inherent in transfer printing: no single transfer-printing method is universally applicable to a wide range of textile fibres. While a printer with a conventional rotary-screen printing set-up can proceed to print cotton, polyester, blends and so forth without doing a great deal beyond changing the printing ink used, the transfer printer hoping to have the same flexibility would need to have available a range of equipment suited to the variety of systems that have to be used for different dyes and substrates using transfer technology. 

Transfer Printing Process

In addition factors such as stock costs, response time and so on do not always apply and unlike dyers, most printers are able to operate without steaming or washing by using pigment-printing methods. Thus a balance exists which not only permits but even requires the coexistence of direct and transfer printing. The relative importance of the two methods consequently varies with fluctuations of the market, fashion and fibre preference.

A great many methods of producing textile transfer prints have been described in the literature. Many of them exist only in patent specifications but several have been developed to production potential. They may be summarised most conveniently as below.

Sublimation Transfer
This method depends on the use of a volatile dye in the printed design. When the paper is heated the dye is preferentially adsorbed from the vapour phase by the textile material with which the heated paper is held in contact. This is commercially the most important of the transfer-printing methods.

Melt Transfer
This method has been used since the 19th century to transfer embroidery designs to fabric. The design is printed on paper using a waxy ink, and a hot iron applied to its reverse face presses the paper against the fabric. The ink melts on to the fabric in contact with it. This was the basis of the first commercially successful transfer process, known as Star printing, developed in Italy in the late 1940s. It is used in the so-called ‘hot-split’ transfer papers extensively used today in garment decoration.

Film Release
This method is similar to melt transfer with the difference that the design is held in an ink layer which is transferred completely to the textile from a release paper using heat and pressure. Adhesion forces are developed between the film and the textile which are stronger than those between the film and the paper. The method has been developed for the printing of both continuous web and garment panel units, but is used almost exclusively for the latter purpose. In commercial importance it is comparable with sublimation transfer printing.

Wet Transfer
Water-soluble dyes are incorporated into a printing ink which is used to produce a design on paper. The design is transferred to a moistened textile using carefully regulated contact pressure. The dye transfers by diffusion through the aqueous medium. The method is not used to any significant extent at the present time.

These different methods are considered separately in this chapter since they introduce different scientific and technical factors, and their use is best discussed in the context of the rather different commercial environments.