BTMA - British Textile Machinery Association

As a specialist in weaving machines for carpets and industrial fabrics, Crabtree’s extensive product range includes:

• Axminster carpet and rug weaving machinery.
• Weaving machinery for belting and associated products.
• Weaving machines for multi-ply industrial fabrics.
• Beaming machinery for warp and pile beaming.
• Creels for direct beaming and loom creeling.

Carpet production

For Axminster carpet weavers, the company offers a range of new Axminster looms, including:

• The Stage IVCX for broadloom contract carpet production. This highly-successful electronic jacquard loom – built for either seven or eight pitch weaving – has earned a deserved reputation for reliability and productivity. Weaving from warp beams or warps fed from creels, it continues to sell well in existing and new markets.
• The Stage IVR for the rug weaving sector. This electronic jacquard loom produces unique coarse gauge (four pitch) speciality rug constructions, or alternatively can be built to weave fine gauge (nine pitch) for high-quality rug production.

Industrial fabric weaving

For industrial fabric weavers, a range of machinery is offered, the specification depending on the fabric to be produced. Centred on the basic elements of weaving machine, multi-frame dobby, multiple let-off units and fabric roll-up, two basic machine types are offered:

• The MPB loom for the production of solid woven multi-ply, conveyor belt carcassing. This rapier weaving machine is acknowledged to be the market leader, and is used by all the major solid woven belting manufacturers across the world. Weaving from either creels or multiple warp beam stands, the loom is available in a variety of widths. The three-metre-wide ‘double’ loom produces two separate fabrics simultaneously, both with genuine woven selvedges.
• The IFL loom for the production of industrial and technical fabrics. With a reed space of one metre, this rapier weaving machine is unique in its ability to produce dense, multi-ply fabrics for industrial brake linings and other solid woven fabrics manufactured at up to 38mm in thickness.

A programme of upgrades is available for existing machinery, including retrofitting of servo drives and modified components to improve machine performance.

Crabtree is continuing an active machine research programme for the development of Axminster weaving machines.

For the tufted carpet industry, Crabtree produces a pile beaming machine for the preparation of pile beams as an alternative to tufting from creels. Built on the drum winding principle, the machine is one of the heaviest in its class.

Two locations

The main machine building and spare parts divisions of Crabtree Textile Machines are now located at the factories of Crabtree’s parent company, Cobble Blackburn, in Blackburn, UK. Crabtree machines and components are also now being built at Cobble Blackburn’s new factory in Suzhou, 75 kilometres from Shanghai in China.