Staple (textiles)

A staple fiber is a textile fiber of discrete length. The opposite is a filament fiber, which comes in continuous lengths. Staple length is a characteristic fiber length of a sample of staple fibers. A fiber is made up of natural substances and is known for being longer than it is wide. It is an essential criterion in yarn spinning, and aids in cohesion and twisting. Compared to synthetic fibers, natural fibers tend to have different and shorter lengths. The quality of natural fibers like cotton is categorized on staple length such as short, medium, long staple, and extra-long. Gossypium barbadense, one of several cotton species, produces extra-long staple fibers. The staple fibers may be obtained from natural and synthetic sources. In the case of synthetics and blends, the filament yarns are cut to a predetermined length (staple length). The word staple, used about a fiber of wool, is attested from the 15th century; the use was later broadened to include other fibers such as cotton. The origin of the word is not known for certain. It may be a back-formation either from the obsolete noun stapler meaning wool-stapler, a merchant trading in wool who would sort and class the wool according to quality, or else from the obsolete verb staple, to receive goods such as wool at a staple port. For cotton and wool, staple length was originally tested by hand, the tester removing a clump of fiber and then arranging it on a dark cloth for measurement. In the 1970s, machines were invented to do this task, taking around 5 minutes for cotton and for wool around 20 minutes. Today, machines such as Optical scanning methods like digital fibro graph and HVI are used to measure fiber length; they can measure the staple length efficiently. Staple length, a property of staple fiber, is a term referring to the average length of a group of fibers of any composition. Staple length depends on the origin of the fibers. Natural fibers (such as cotton or wool) have a range of lengths in each sample, so the staple length is an average.