Where It All Starts...Sort Of

[alan802]

I was out visiting my parents yesterday and they happen to live in the middle of a farm field that usually has either corn or cotton planted on about a 100 acre track.  Their house sits literally in the middle of the 100 acres and right now my cousin has cotton planted there so I took a few pics and it got me thinking about then entire process and where it starts.  Obviously for man made fibers this isn't where it all begins but you get the point.  I personally have zero knowledge on how the cotton shirt comes about as far as the manufacturing process goes and how a cotton ball turns into a tee shirt but maybe if we are so inclined we could discuss that.  Here are the pics I took yesterday.



This is the view in 3 directions and the view towards the back is only about 5 acres before you see a tree lined creek bed.


This is the view from the front porch towards the road with the flag pole whipping in the wind.  My mom is quite proud of the new flag pole and the amount of wind that is out there is insane.  Even at 7am it's blowing 20-25mph on the average day.  The ordinary flag and pole will not withstand that type of wind for very long but I hope this one is built well enough to make it.




If anyone has any pics or knowledge to share about the manufacture or life cycle of a tee shirt feel free to add anything to the thread.

[ScreenPrinter123]

Seems to me that you're staring at a way to reduce your overhead (blank tee's) by 90% :-).  Let me know when you get that up and running and I'll order from the "Johnston Cotton Co." line of apparel.

[abchung]

Well I don't know much about spinning factories(from cotton to yarn) nor dying process. But I know about knitting machine because we do some knitting.

Most tee are made from circular knitting machine, because they are fast.

Meyer & Cie FLT Continuous Knitted Fabric Production

People sell knitted fabric by the kilogram while weaved materials are sold by the yard.
The price of the fabric mainly depends on the yarn thickness  because the thinner the yarn, the longer it will take to produce 1 kilogram of fabric. Also better yarn, needles and machines are needed to produce thin fabric.
Although the thicker yarn is cheaper per kilogram of fabric, it can be cheaper to produce t-shirt with thinner yarn material (to a certain degree), because you can get more yardage per kilogram. Once you get into super thin fabric, the price goes up significantly because most companies would use German made machines and very good quality yarn.

Sewing of the tees.
Tubes fabric: The width of the tee is already set from the diameter of the shirt. So we only sew the sleeves onto the shirt.
Non-tube fabric: We cut the material from a fabric made from large machines to the desired width. Then we sew the side of the shirt.
Tubes fabric cost more because each machines diameter is made for a particular size. You can't use a 23inch diameter machine to make a 16inch wide shirt, unless you want to cut it to the desire width. But that defeats the purpose of using tube fabric.

If you have the market, tubed shirt is cheaper to manufacture. If you don't then non-tube is the cheaper way to go.

[whitewater]

abchung...that video is something... with that music in the background and those machines going it looks like some science fiction where they are cloning humans or something. LOL

Some things really amaze me on how the engineers or inventors come up with this stuff.

[screenprintguy]

video does have a little Xfiles style to it. So I'm assuming it really goes from the cotton ball, to thread, then thread woven into the various fabrics, or yarns?

[alan802]

Seems to me that you're staring at a way to reduce your overhead (blank tee's) by 90% :-).  Let me know when you get that up and running and I'll order from the "Johnston Cotton Co." line of apparel.

I do have direct access to a lot of cotton but it seems like there is quite a bit more to getting that cotton ball into a ring spun XL in assorted colors.  And there isn't a lot of videos showing everything either.  That video above is the first I've ever seen of that process.