Yarn hairiness evaluation using image processing

Yarn hairiness or amounts of released fibers from the staple yarn are one of the main aspects to detect the yarn quality. This paper illustrates the method of finding yarn hairiness using image processing techniques with a low-cost USB Web Camera in association with a yarn moving arrangement. The steps involved with the image processing comprises of segmenting the yarn core from the image and fibre extraction. The yarn hairiness found by the proposed method are quantised by different indices, such as yarn hair area index and yarn hair length index and count of hair tips at specific distances from the central line of the yarn core. The future goal of this work is to acquire the image of the yarn from a spinning frame with the help of a high resolution web camera and process the same with advanced software to characterize the yarn which in turn dictates the fabric appearance in terms of hairiness.