Cason Develops First Spinning Plant for Fine-Denier PP Yarns

Editor’s Note: Cason SpA, Montonate di Mornago, Italy, has been serving the textile industry since 1956. In recent years, the company has firmly established itself as a leading worldwide supplier of manual, semi-automatic and fully automated bobbin strippers.

With the dawning of the new era, Cason will diversify into a dramatic new area—as a builder of complete spinning plants specifically for polypropylene fiber.

The move to add this separate product line is not as unlikely as it may first seem. Cason has always invested significantly in research and development and has prided itself on its ability to custom design the most sophisticated of equipment according to exacting customer requirements.

Today, two years after embarking on the R&D for a completely new spinning process, Cason claims to be the only manufacturer to have successfully designed a spinning plant capable of producing a 70 denier PP yarn for apparel purposes.

Below is the company’s own story behind this development.

Charles Heschmeyer, Editor

By Giovanni Cama, Managing Director, Cason SpA, Italy

Market analysis

If we look back over the years we can see that the textile industry has always shown an interest in using PP yarn to produce garments. Indeed, thanks to its chemical and mechanical properties — lightness, high resistance to abrasion, soiling and moisture, and other performance features — polypropylene seems to be the yarn of the future for high-comfort clothes and hosiery. More importantly, PP yarn is 100% recyclable and its production cycle is inexpensive, two features that could probably attract a very important potential market: the automotive industry.
On the other hand, the downside of PP yarn for textile uses has been the spinning process. Several attempts to spin PP yarn using modified plants originally developed for other fibers led to a yarn quality not always useful for the target.
In 1997, after having hired a team of specialists and considering its own experience in manufacturing textile machinery, Cason SpA launched its new project: developing a spinning plant expressly designed for PP yarn.

What Cason can supply today

After two years of working closely with customers, after prototypes and their feedback, company engineers and specialists have discovered the technical solutions to the ECO70, the new compact PP spinning plant from Cason SpA. The company is pleased to report that the first unit is now running at full production.
The ECO70 is a line of spinning plants for producing POY, FDY and FDY High Tenacity polypropylene yarn. Each plant is configurable upon customer production needs: modules with 4, 6 and 8 positions can be doubled (two fronts) in case of POY plant.
The flexibility of the ECO70 means customers can produce yarn with different titer and/or color with the same plant. The customer can choose a plant with two independent spinning sections with the same extrusion line or two separate extrusion lines with more spinning possibilities. The same FDY plant will produce medium- tenacity or high-tenacity yarn.
Flexibility, however, is not the main feature of the new Cason plant. What is exclusive and new is the spinning process. The conventional process has been completely reviewed to spin fine-denier yarn with uster < 1 for textile use.
Starting from the extruder, manufactured by Cason, through the melting process and the spinning heads (again by Cason) heated by resisting elements and infrared heaters, to the spinning section and the yarn cooling system— every component has been designed with the purpose to spin fine-denier PP yarn.
The adjustable greasing emulsion and automatic yarn tension control and regulation are the core technology of the ECO70, resulting in yarn uniformity, constant titer and repetitiveness. The fine-denier PP yarn produced by Cason’s plant is a product that can be safely used for garments, hosiery, sportswear and many other applications.
The ECO70 comes equipped with an entangling device, automatic yarn cutter, and full diagnostic/parameters adjusting settings. Take-up winders, manufactured by leading companies, can be manual or fully automatic, single or multi-thread.

The yarn

Today , with Cason’s ECO70, it is possible to produce 70-denier POY yarn (after texturing) in 40 filaments. All titers up to 3000 denier are possible. New developments are on the way to spin yarn of 70 denier in 60 filaments, and the final target is microfilament. The FDY plant is for producing yarn starting from 70 den to 3000 den with a maximum of 1.9 d.p.f.
Other key points are: uster lower than 1 and tenacity to 4 g/den or 8 g/den.

Cason Support

All users know that the plant itself cannot make the job. Cason SpA will support the customer from start-up through the entire life of the plant. Moreover, our specialists stay close to the end-user to help him produce the yarn he needs. Cason’s know-how that comes with every plant is the real value-added service that Cason provides.