Special Correspondent
India headquartered Indian Card Clothing (ICC) has been producing Card Clothing since 65 years and is the only global manufacturer of both, metallic and flexible card clothing. The company operates three manufacturing facilities. Through the two Indian plants, it services the Indian and Asian markets and through the UK unit, it sells to the European and American continent.
ICC offers its entire range of card clothing products and card room accessories in the Bangladesh textile market, where it is present since 25 long years. The company also has a presence in more than 22 countries, directly or through channel partners.
Its card room technologies have been set up in more than 50 mills across Bangladesh, which includes the likes of T.K. Group, Monn Group, Gulshan Spinning, Comilla Spinning, Nassa Spinning, Rahmant Group, Prime Textile Group, Shajahan Spinning, etc. The company takes extra care to ensure that the quality of its card room technologies is at par or sometimes even better than its competitors.
Currently, ICC is in the process of developing carding wires, like cylinder wire, doffer wire, stationery and revolving flats which would practically double the fruitful life of card clothing. This has been achieved by applying special coatings on carding wires.
“These new carding wires have been installed in 20 textile mills across India for testing and early results are very encouraging. These technologies will be a game changer for the worldwide card clothing industry and will be commercially launched very soon,” Mr Prasad Mahale, Vice President (Sales & Marketing) at ICC said, while speaking to Textile Focus at DTG 2018 in Dhaka.
Recently, the company has also started a new vertical, which provides diagnostic services to spinning mills. ICC provides a second opinion on whether certain parts or spares, really need to be changed or still have a useful life left in them.
According to Mr Mahale, it is normal for machinery suppliers to prescribe a replacement schedule for spares and other parts of the machines and these parts are replaced as per the schedule, irrespective of the need. “ICC plays a crucial role by offering these diagnostic services and thereby help textile spinning mills avoid replacing running spares and consumables, until they achieve their full useful life,” he added.
The company also offers state-of-the-art flat clipping machines with Side Clipping technology and is among the only two companies in the world to supply this technology. It provides the most accurate and precise clipping of revolving flats which results in better carding quality, when compared with roller clipping technology. “Without compromising on quality, the cost of our flat clipping machine is very affordable, as against those supplied by our competitor,” Mr Mahale informed.
ICC has designed, developed and patented the Sharp Right Wire, used to sharpen card wires like doffer wires, cylinder wires, etc, which assist in increasing life of carding wires and helps maintain the consistency in the quality of sliver over the life of the card clothing.
The company also supplies Resharpening machines for revolving flats, which offers services like fIat cleaning, flat polishing and flat resharpening. “The actual action in the card takes place between the revolving flats and cylinder. So, if proper health of these two vital organs of a card is preserved, sliver quality is also maintained,” Mr Mahale explained.
ICC has also identified the challenge of workmen safety, while unmounting used wire, which is pulled out with hands and used to take 4-6 hours to complete the task. The company automated the complete wire unmounting process by launching an affordably priced wire demounting machine, which takes just 90 minutes to do the needful.
In recent times, ICC has also launched a Tops Height Measurement (THM) device. The THM, which is a recipient of a Research & Development Award, measures and identifies variations in flat tops on the card machine itself, so only those particular tops that need to be grounded are identified by the THM and the on card grinding action can be performed.
Explaining the benefit of the THM, Mr Mahale said, “Earlier the flats needed to be removed and top heights were measured manually and used to take 2-3 shifts, as against 2-3 hours with the help of the THM.”
 has been producing Card Clothing since 65 years and is the only global manufacturer of both, metallic and flexible card clothing.){kind=link}