Carpet Tufting Machine

Overview

A carpet tufting machine builds pile carpet by punching yarn-threaded needles through a moving backing cloth and catching each loop underneath, repeating across a full broadloom width hundreds of times a minute. It is the fastest way to make carpet: where weaving interlaces yarns, tufting simply inserts pile into a ready-made backing, so a five-meter machine can produce broadloom at a rate no loom matches. Loopers below the bed decide whether each insertion stays a loop or is cut into tuft, giving loop-pile or cut-pile carpet.

Yarn runs from the Yarn Creel & Feed-In, floor-standing racks of hundreds of packages feeding through guide tubes and tension gates so every end enters at even tension, into the working head of the machine.

How it works

The Needle Bar Assembly holds a full-width bar of needles, reciprocated up and down by eccentrics and push rods off the main shaft. On each stroke the needles punch the threaded yarn through the backing cloth. Beneath the bed the Looper / Hook Bar Assembly swings hooks up to catch each loop in time with the needles; for cut pile the hooks pair with reciprocating knives that slice the loops open into tuft.

Pattern and pile height come from the Pattern Yarn Feed. Banks of servo-driven scroll and roll feeds meter each group of ends independently, so the controller can starve or feed yarn to vary pile height and place color across the width. The backing is moved through by the Backing Feed & Take-Up, driven feed rollers pulling the primary backing across the bed under the needles while take-up rollers wind off the finished carpet.

All shafts run from the Main Drive, an inverter-fed motor turning the main and looper shafts through a gearbox and belt, with a clutch and brake to start and stop on the stitch and an encoder feeding shaft angle to the controller. The Pattern Control System system runs the design, syncing the main drive with every yarn-feed servo, while the Lubrication System pump keeps the needle, looper and shaft bearings oiled.