Carding
Also searched as: carded, carded cotton
Opening and separating fibers into a web or strand before spinning.
In detail
Carding opens a mass of fibers, separates tangles and produces a more manageable arrangement for later processing. Wire-covered surfaces help distribute the fibers; the output may be a web or a sliver, depending on the production system. Carding is a preparation step rather than the operation that makes a finished, twisted yarn.
The science and numbers
A card works with opposed surfaces clothed in fine wire points. Where two neighboring surfaces carry points that face each other and move at different speeds, tufts are teased apart into individual fibers; where the points trail, fibers are simply stripped from one surface to the next. Cotton cards run a large main cylinder against slowly moving flats, while wool and many nonwoven cards use pairs of worker and stripper rollers around the cylinder. The thin web leaving the card is condensed into sliver for spinning or laid down as a web for nonwoven bonding. Carding also removes some trash and neps, but it cannot remove all short fiber, which is the task of combing. Mill laboratories check the result with single-fiber systems such as AFIS, which reports neps per gram and short fiber content, alongside bundle measurements from the High Volume Instrument.
A practical example
Two cotton yarns can both be carded, while only one receives an additional combing step. On a mill specification, “carded” therefore describes preparation. It does not tell you the yarn count, twist, fabric weight or how the finished garment will feel after washing.
What to distinguish
Do not treat carded as synonymous with low quality. The appropriate preparation depends on the intended yarn and fabric. Compare the actual finished textile and its performance requirements.
Origins and history
Hand cards, paired boards set with bent wire teeth, preceded powered cards, and card rooms later became the dustiest part of cotton mills. Occupational studies linked them to byssinosis: Cavagna and colleagues in 1969 reported the condition in 32 percent of workers in a cotton card room and 47 percent in a hemp card room where airborne bacterial endotoxin was measured, and Rylander and colleagues in 1979 found that Monday lung-function losses among card-room workers in 23 US mills tracked dust levels and, more closely, Gram-negative bacteria in bale cotton. A 1983 analysis found card-room dust richer in noncellulosic organic matter than spinning-room dust.
Related terms
Sources & further reading
- CottonWorks: Carding
- Woolmark: Wool processing
- British Journal of Industrial Medicine: Effects in man and rabbits of inhalation of cotton dust or extracts and purified endotoxins (1969)
- British Journal of Industrial Medicine: Bacterial contamination of cotton as an indicator of respiratory effects among card room workers (1979)
- American Industrial Hygiene Association Journal: A chemical and engineering analysis of dust in textile mills (1983)
- Data in Brief: Paired HVI and AFIS dataset for global cotton characterization (2026)
Technical references reviewed 2026-09-22. Examples are illustrative. Industry organizations and manufacturers describe their own fields; their references are not independent product endorsements. Figures are approximate and depend on the stated test conditions.