What is Carded Cotton Yarn?

Carded cotton yarn is spun from cotton that has been opened, cleaned and passed through the carding machine but not combed. In Cotton Incorporated’s ring-yarn comparison, carded yarn is less even, hairier and coarser than combed yarn, but cheaper to process. Carded is a fiber-preparation term, not a spinning system: carded yarn can be spun on the ring or the open-end system. In Turkish it is called karde iplik.

How carded yarn is made

In Cotton Incorporated’s flow table, carded ring yarn goes through bale feeding, opening, cleaning, blending, carding, drawing (two passages), roving, ring spinning and winding (ISP 1006, p. 1). The card separates the fibers one by one with wire-covered cylinders. It is designed to remove trash, short fibers and neps, aligns the fibers to some extent and forms them into a sliver (ISP 1006, p. 3; Textile Yarns, p. 7).

The combed line adds pre-drawing, lap forming and combing; the carded line has none of these. All cotton fibers pass through the card, including the cotton that goes into combed yarn (Textile Yarns, p. 7). So what sets carded yarn apart is not having been carded but not having been combed. In open-end spinning, the same preparation is followed by no roving and no separate winding step (ISP 1006, pp. 1 and 6).

Properties of carded yarn

Cotton Incorporated compares carded and combed ring yarn (Textile Yarns, p. 11). The comparison shows the direction of the difference; the source does not give its size. Compared with combed yarn, carded yarn is:

• Evenness: Less even, with more neps and trash and less fiber parallelism.
• Strength and twist: Lower in strength. Because short fibers are removed, combed yarn can be spun with lower twist (ISP 1006, p. 4); for similar strength it gets less twist, so it is softer and has less torque (Textile Yarns, p. 10). More twist makes yarn stronger but harder, with more torque (ISP 1006, p. 5).
• Surface: Hairier, larger in diameter and less lustrous; combed yarn has a lower tendency to pill and shed fibers (Textile Yarns, pp. 10-11).
• Count: In coarser counts; fine counts cannot be spun from carded fiber alone (Textile Yarns, p. 10).
• Cost: Combing means an extra step and waste, and combed cotton costs more than carded cotton (NPTEL). The sources do not give the size of the price difference.

Uses

The sources give no binding table of products and counts for carded ring yarn. CottonWorks writes that combing may be needed for some yarn counts and product performance standards, while for other products it is a price decision; in the second group carded yarn is the low-cost option.

Karahan (2007) studied the dynamic water absorption of terry fabrics and reported that a fabric made with 29.5 tex ring-carded yarn absorbed water faster than fabrics made with 29.5×2 tex (two-ply) ring-carded and with open-end yarn. 29.5 tex is about Ne 20 (590.54 ÷ 29.5 ≈ 20.0; ISP 1006, p. 8). For choosing towel yarn, see how to judge terry towel quality.

The usual open-end yarn is also carded: there is no combing step for open-end in the flow table. Cotton Incorporated writes that open-end yarn is used in underwear, socks, denim, sweaters and outerwear (Textile Yarns, p. 20).

Terms often confused with carded

To avoid mix-ups, use “combed” only for combed yarn: carded yarn has seen the card, not the comb.

What to write in a quote

Write the fiber, the fiber preparation, the spinning system and the count separately: “100% cotton, Ne 20/1 carded ring yarn.” To convert the count to another system, use the yarn count converter. If a yarn is quoted as “combed,” ask whether it is fully or partly combed, and request unevenness, yarn fault and hairiness values in writing. Cotton yarn manufacturers can be found among cotton yarn companies.

Frequently asked questions

Is carded yarn the same as combed yarn?

No. Carded yarn passes through the carding machine but is not combed; combed yarn is combed as well. Because all cotton fibers pass through the card, “has been carded” does not tell the two apart (Textile Yarns, p. 7).

Is carded yarn poor-quality yarn?

No; it offers different properties. According to Cotton Incorporated, combed yarn is more even, stronger and less hairy, while carded yarn costs less to process. The count of the product and the performance expected decide the choice.

What counts is carded yarn spun in?

Cotton Incorporated writes that combing makes finer counts possible that cannot be spun from carded fiber alone. According to NPTEL (IIT Delhi), combing is optional at coarse and medium counts and essential at fine counts. The sources give no numerical upper count limit for carded yarn; ask for a sample and a quality report at the target count.