Editing Carding (section)

{{Short description|Process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibres}}
{{Other uses}}
[[File:Jamieson wool Shetland.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|Dyed wool being carded with a 1949 Tatham carding machine at Jamieson Mill, [[Sandness]], [[Shetland]], [[Scotland]]]]
[[File:Muhammad Ainul - Howrah 2011-12-11 00914.jpg|thumb|Cotton carder (known as dhunuri or lep [[wallah]]) in [[Howrah]], [[Kolkata]], [[India]]]]
[[File:William Tatham Breaker Carding engine.jpg|thumb|William Tatham Breaker carder.]]
In [[Textile manufacturing|textile production]], '''carding''' is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibres to produce a continuous web or [[sliver (textiles)|sliver]] suitable for subsequent processing.<ref name="Yilmaz">{{cite journal|last=Yilmaz|first=Nasire Deniz|author2=Powell|year=2005|title=The Technology of Terry Towel production|journal=Journal of Textile and Apparel, Technology and Management|publisher=North Carolina Stare University|volume=4|issue=4|url=http://www.tx.ncsu.edu/jtatm/volume4issue4/Articles/Yilmaz/Yilmaz_full.pdf}}</ref> This is achieved by passing the fibres between differentially moving surfaces covered with "card clothing", a firm flexible material embedded with metal pins. It breaks up locks and unorganised clumps of fibre and then aligns the individual fibres to be parallel with each other. In preparing wool fibre for [[Spinning (textiles)|spinning]], carding is the step that comes after teasing.<ref name=PWH>{{cite web |title=Preparing Wool for Handspinning |url=http://www.lahottee.info/E_FiberPreparation.php |website=La Hottée |date=27 July 2007 |access-date=2014-09-16 |archive-date=2014-08-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140822232441/http://www.lahottee.info/E_FiberPreparation.php |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The word is derived from the Latin {{lang|la|Carduus}} meaning thistle or [[Dipsacus|teasel]],<ref>{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Carding}}</ref> as dried vegetable teasels were first used to comb the raw wool before technological advances led to the use of machines.