You are here : Home - Wool Carpets and rugs summary > All what you need to know about carpet manufacturing processes: How carpets are manufactured - axminster and wilton weaves, wilton jacquard weaving techniques, carpets tufting, hand made rugs and hand tufted carpets, colortec contract carpets manufacturing process.

AXMINSTER WOVEN CARPETS:

The well-known name of woven carpets suitable for both residential and contract uses. Regarding carpets history, the name itself is coming from the town of Axminster, England where "Axminster carpets" were knotted in wool since the 18th century. The name remained as a generic term after the arrival of power looms over the 19th century and nowadays if "Axminster carpets" are still produced in the town of Axminster and still known all over the world as English carpets they are also manufactured and available worldwide from U.S., China, Poland, Belgium, South Africa etc..local axminster carpet weavers. Where an axminster carpet is now made does not really matter anymore, the important issue is how ?

A typical contract carpets installation with extra heavy custom made axminster carpet for an hotel ballroom in the US	A prestigious axminster contract carpets installation with custom made axminster carpeting manufactured for Phoenicia Intercontinental hotel in Beirut - Lebanon	An extra heavy axminster contract carpet custom designed with a modern design inspired from modern art painting for the lobby of the Meridien Montparnasse Paris - France

Woven in fact on two distinctly different types of looms "the Spool Axminster loom and the Gripper Axminster loom", both of which were developed from the original jacquard loom technology of the nineteenth century. Generally, the Gripper - Axminster loom is viewed as better suited to contract carpet production, and many of these looms now operate electronically. During this process, the yarn is cut to a pre-determined length (according to the selected pile height) and woven simultaneously on the same loom with a jute or synthetic backing. Designs are created by the use of different yarn colours in specific places during the weaving process. The looms on which the axminster carpets are woven have and are still changing considerably over the lats years but the construction principal of interlocking the pile yarns with backing yarns is little changed.


Most axminster carpets are manufactured now using a blend of 80% wool /20% nylon fibres; however, both 100% wool and 100% nylon are also suitable. Axminster carpets are available from "in-stock" ranges or custom made to order. They are recognised worldwide as one one of the best possible option for hotels or hospitalities contract carpeting and are also available from stock ranges for superior residential carpeting. In our opinion one of the most important fact is that an axminster woven carpet cannot delaminate in use as the backing is an integral part of the whole carpet (however this is also true for other woven carpets such as jacquard wilton or face-to-wilton carpets)

Broadloom Axminster loom (Traditionnal gripper Axminster loom)	Traditionnal Jacquard cards cutting machine

Axminster weaving process

Axminster carpets are only cut pile no loop pile available with this weaving process

Axminster carpets are installed in thousands of hotels, casinos, cruise ships, official or institutional buildings and beautiful homes throughout the world. Axminster weaving is still widely used for the production of wool rugs, carpet squares broadloom residential and contract carpets in multicoloured designs.
Design possibilities are limitless combining today's axminster looms with latest C.A.D. software.

Spool-gripper axminster looms are still used by numerous axminster carpet manufacturers worldwide, mainly for producing rugs and traditionnal pub carpets as residential "english carpets" i.e. more heavily patterned,
this specific manufacturing process allowing to weave axminster carpets with a virtually unlimited number of colors and bearing in mind that there is some limit regarding the size of pattern repeats. However if spool grippers looms are (so far...) seen as more productive, they remain in most cases more suitable for longer production runs.



A Spool Axminster loom


Gripper-Jacquard axminster looms are the most versatile and by there are the ones the most suitable for contract carpeting.
With the introduction already some years ago of the electronic jacquard option and with today's E.J.axminster looms available from various manufacturers this versatility is increasing every year. Operating with 8 then 11 to 12 colours electronic axminster looms are now offered with 16 colours option for the latest ones...

The weaving speed is also changing and some of the latest looms are also called high speed axminster looms or E.J. High speed axminster looms...



The new generation of Axminster looms :
High speed electronic jacquard Axminster loom


Another "key" for axminster carpets long lasting sucess when coming to hotels and hospitalities quality contract carpets is that they may be woven (or constructed) within various qualities (this being the result of several criterias such as: number of rows per inch, yarn count, pile heigh, etc...) in order to achieve the best "value for money" according to the expected end use (hotel guestrooms, hotel corridors, restaurants and public areas, casinos and leisure centers, stair runners, airports, offices and convention centers etc...)

It means that the same design may be woven within very different qualities, according to specific needs with regard to the area it will finally fitted (again hotel bedrooms, public areas, stairs case etc...)

Click here to go directly to the "in-stock" Axminster carpets section

Click here to go directly to the "Flexiweave" Axminster carpets section

Click here to go directly to the "Custom made" Axminster carpets section (part1)

Click here to go directly to the "Custom made" Axminster carpets section (part 2)

WILTON WEAVING and WILTON JACQUARD CARPETS:

With regard to history, and as for axminster carpets the name "Wilton carpets" is also coming from the town, Wilton, England where they were created, at the end of the 17th century and over the early part of the 18th century after French Huguennots carpet weavers moved to England.

Wilton carpet, 100% wool custom made with a pink floral design on white background for a private customer's sophisticated bedroom design	Custom made wilton carpets 100% wool with coordinated borders for this privatly owned french mansion	Striped wilton carpet, tailor made for a contemporary home interior design

Several loom types are used by carpet manufacturers to produce a variety of carpet constructions which carry the Wilton name. Both, plain or single-frame Wilton and Jacquard or multi-frame Wilton come from the traditional "Warp and Weft" weaving process. Wilton carpets can be woven with cut pile, loop-pile, or cut and loop pile. Pile heights can be varied within a single carpet to created a "structural" or carved effect. Face-to-face Wilton carpets is made on a different type of loom, which particularly favoured for the manufacture of area rugs, but loop-pile or cur and loop are not possible with last type of wilton loom. All Wilton carpets may be woven using different fibres - among them 100% wool, 80% wool/20% nylon, or synthetic according to expected quality and specified use. As already said, a wilton woven carpet (like an axminster one) will not delaminate as the backing is an integral part of the carpet construction.

A traditional Wilton Jacquard narrow loom



Wilton weaving process

Wilton Jacquard broadloom	Face to Face Wilton loom

Click here to go directly to the "in-stock" carpets section to find plain wool wilton carpets

Click here to go directly to stair runners carpets section to find wilton carpets for stairs runner carpets

Click here to go directly to the "Custom made" Wilton carpets section

Today, most of the world's carpet production utilises tufting technology. The action of a tufting machine is quite similar to that of a domestic sewing machine. Yarn bobbins feed yarn to needles which stitch through the anchor(or "primary") backing to create loops. If a "velvet" finish is desired, these loops are cut with a blade, and the finish is referred to as "cut pile velvet". For a "loop pile" finish, the loops are left intact. "Cut and loop" finishes, which mix the two techniques, are also popular. The tufted base is sealed with an adhesive, and the secondary base (of jute or synthetic) is then applied using latex based glue. Designs may be created in two ways: by using pre-dyed yarns on Graphic tuft, Hydrashift or cross over tufting machines; or, by printing a design on a plain tufted carpet base. A variety of customised printing processes is available - Chromojet, Militron, or screen (flat or rotating) printing. Tufted carpets may be manufactured using 80% wool/20% nylon, 100% wool, 100% polyamide or any other manmade or natural fibre.

Tufting process



Tufting machine

Click here to go directly to the "Custom made" contract carpets section

Click here to go directly to the "Custom made" Tufted carpets section

Custom made hand tufted rugs and carpets begins their lives first as a design concept...Clients, Designers or specifiers usually supply us with anything from a simple sketch or a simple idea to detailled specification regarding colours and rugs or carpets sizes. This will allow us to submit samples and/or computer drawings for customer's approval prior to launching the production process.

When it comes to manufacturing and as the process name implies, this type of carpet is handmade and accorindly still produced by craftsmen who will first transfer the approved design at scale 1/1 on a canvas stretched on to a tufting frame which will become the rug or the carpet's anchor backing.

These craftspeople then "tuft" the carpet using pneumatic "tufting guns" to insert various coloured yarns into a backing. Rugs and carpets piles manufactured in this manner may be either "cut velvet" or "loop pile" finish and of course using a mixt of cut pile and loop pile finishes with at the meantime varying pile heights within the same rug or carpet will achieve rich and sometimes spectacular textured or sculptured effect.

Hand tufting - No limit to creativity!!

Certainly this is among the most sumptuous types of carpet made, offering infinite design opportunities and variations. As a result we recommend using only those yarns blended with 100% New Zealand wool of the highest possible quality. We can also incorporate gold/silver LUREX yarn type (in thin lines and loop only). The hand tufting technique of making carpets and rugs is highly creative and allows designers and clients alike to achieve an exclusive one off "art decoration" object or in fact a piece of art which will enhances any interior scheme.

Click here to go directly to the "Custom made" Hand tufted wool rugs and carpets section

Click here to go directly to the "in-stock" Hand tufted wool rugs and carpets section

Click here to go directly to the "Custom made" Hand tufted carpet runners and stair runners section

Colortec is an advanced computerised technology wich takes establised tufting principles on to a far more complex level in order to produce 80% wool /20% nylon or 100% wool or 100% nylon contract carpets. It combines the known techniques of :

• S.N.B. (Sliding Needle Bar) and
• I.C.N. (Independently Controlled Needles) with intermittent feed of the primary backing material.

S.N.B. (Sliding Needle Bar) - A cam which enables a controlled left and right sideways movement of the needle bar is fitted to one side of the Colortec machine.
This allows a sideways movement of 6 needle stitches across the full width of the carpet.

I.C.N. (Independently Controlled Needles) - Every single needle along the needle bar is individually controlled by a computerised programme created by our Design Team. Although it is not visual, as far as the computer is concerned, the needles are grouped as separate sets of 6 across the width of the machines but the spacing (gauge) remains constant. As the needle bar is moved sideways by the cam, 1 of 6 needles from each set is selected to tuft it's yarn into the primary backing cloth below.

Hotel corridor - Bespoke design 80% wool / 20% nylon custom made colortec carpets	Computerised Colortec broadloom machine

The polypropylene primary backing cloth is fed into the machine using an intermittent stop / start movement allowing time for the S.N.B. to carry out its full sideways movement of 6 stitches across the width. Then slightly more of the backing cloth, equivalent to one row of stitches (stitch rate) is fed into the machine in readiness to receive yarn from whichever needles are selected for use in the next row of the design.

Generally, up to a maximum of 6 different coloured yarn can be used in Colortec designs.

After passing stringent inspection, a secondary backing is applied using an adhesive specially developed for Colortec to prevent delamination.

Quality test results are equivalent to those of a traditionally woven carpet in terms of wear, appearance retention, dynamic and static loading

Click here to go directly to the "Custom made" contract carpets section

Click here to go directly to the "Custom made" Colortec carpets section

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Additional information available:

* By phone : 33 139 027 482 or fax : 33 139 027 496

by mail : info@cholleton.com

 

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