soo, shredding 500kgs of cotton for cushions etc. Anyone?!

[buckerooni]

very OT, this is one for the missus. She's starting out a small business in yoga equipment and we've got 500kgs of cotton in the shed (taking up precious brewery real estate) we need to stuff this into cushions and bolsters.

The raw cotton is very lumpy and doesn't stuff in smoothly. The only manual way to smooth out the lumps is to tease it apart with some big brushes - very time consuming and only reasonably effective.

From a bit of research shredding cotton to remove the lumps llooks to be effective. Would a domestic garden shredder do the trick? Unsure is the mechanism would tear the cotton apart. Any other ideas?

The last resort is going to a textile recycler to try to use their equipment, but this is for a small home business in it's infancy.

A long shot, but thanks for any feedback.

yep, this much cotton!

 

[Airgead]

You need a cotton gin...

 

[wide eyed and legless]

1st of my options, resell the cotton and get polyester. (even at a loss)

2nd makeup a board say a meter square or bigger put in a load of 80 mm screws so it looks like a Fakir's bed of nails then make up 25 mm x 50 mm strip again using screws or nails so its like a big comb, lay out the cotton on the board and comb it.

3 rd Go on alibaba and look for the product already made up and import.

4 th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cmlgYRFf6A

 

[mr_wibble]

Hand-cranked (wool) carding machines - so pretty: https://brotherdrumcarder.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=17

Tthe woolen mills at Nundle have big rotating drums with metal spikes all over them.
I guess these are just a huge "pair" of wool carding brushes, except the Rotating Kind.

Oooh, there's a wikipedia article on carding and cotton processing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carding

 

[buckerooni]

Thanks fellas, appreciate the feedback and leads. Half the battle is getting the correct terminology to go looking for things.

The cotton is a 'feature' of the product (to go with the hand printed covers), so we would need to find a way to use it successfully.

 

[sp0rk]

Looks like there's some plans on etsy for building your own mini Drum Carders
https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/176585207/drum-carder-plans?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=carder%20plans&ref=sr_gallery_2
That or you can get drum carders for around $500, if that's not too big of an investment for the business
http://www.tasmanianfibre.com.au/shop/spinning-accessories/drum-carder.html
After a quick google, some people use pet brushes as hand carders
https://www.petstock.com.au/products/122221000076/yours_droolly_shear_magic_slicker_-_medium

 

[manticle]

Put those dogs to work.

 

[buckerooni]

Looks like there's some plans on etsy for building your own mini Drum Carders
https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/176585207/drum-carder-plans?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=carder%20plans&ref=sr_gallery_2
That or you can get drum carders for around $500, if that's not too big of an investment for the business
http://www.tasmanianfibre.com.au/shop/spinning-accessories/drum-carder.html
After a quick google, some people use pet brushes as hand carders
https://www.petstock.com.au/products/122221000076/yours_droolly_shear_magic_slicker_-_medium

pet brushes - yes! This is what we're using by hand. My missus gets through a few kilos with an hour of toil, but we need something speedier. Thanks for the links, terminology is everything!

 

[malt and barley blues]

Check out heckling cotton.