Alpaca fibre has low crimp and smooth fibre surface. This makes the fibre difficult to process, particularly in sliver/fibre transferring and delivering processes. Blending with wool enhances the alpaca fibre processibility, makes the fibre more easily processed on modern wool processing facilities, and allows the development of new products. To evaluate the effect of wool fibre properties, especially wool crimp, on alpaca/wool blends, two alpaca fibre lots were processed to tops then blended with three commercial wool tops via top gillings. Yarns and knitted fabrics were subsequently engineered with identical machine settings. The performance of alpaca/wool blend slivers, yarns and fabrics has been investigated in this paper.
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