How did jacquard develop

How did jacquard develop?

Traditionally, graphic designs were made on a drawer. The healds that need to be pulled up at the end of the warp are manually selected by a second operator, the drawer, not the weaver. The work is slow and labor-intensive, and the complexity of patterns is limited by practical factors.

In the second half of the 15th century, Jean le Calabrais built the first prototype of a jacquard loom. He introduced a new type of machine capable of processing yarn faster and more precisely. Improvements to the loom have been going on over the years.

The drawing machine was improved in 1725, when Basile Bouchon introduced the principle of using perforated paper tape. Consecutive rolls of paper are punched by hand, segmented, each representing an lash or tread, and the length of the roll is determined by the number of shots per repeat of the pattern. Then the jacquard machine evolved from this method.

Joseph Marie Jacquard saw that a mechanism could be developed to produce complex patterns. He may have combined mechanical elements from other inventors, but it was certainly innovative. His machine was credited for being fully perforated in each of its four sides - a modification that allowed him to increase the machine's computing power. In his first machine, he supported the harness with knotted rope and lifted it with a separate trap board.

The term "jacquard loom" is somewhat inaccurate. It is the "Jacquard head" that adapts to many dobby looms that allows the looms to create the complex patterns commonly found in jacquard weaving.

Jacquard-driven looms, although more common in the textile industry, are not as common as dobby looms, which are generally faster and cheaper to operate. However, dobby looms cannot produce so many different fabrics from one warp yarn.

Modern Jacquard machines are computer controlled and can have thousands of hooks instead of the original punch cards.

Threading a jacquard machine is so laborious that many looms only thread it once. Subsequent warp threads are then tied into the existing ones with the help of a knotting robot, which ties each new thread together individually. Even for small looms with only a few thousand warp threads, the rethreading process can take days.

Originally jacquard machines were mechanical, with fabric designs stored in a series of punched cards that were connected to form a continuous chain. Jacquard machines are usually small and can only independently control a relatively small number of warp ends. This requires multiple repetitions over the entire width of the loom. A larger capacity machine, or using multiple machines, allows for better control and fewer repetitions, so larger designs can be woven across the entire loom width.