Process

PROCESS

Banana Fibre Processing and Weaving :

The extraction of the natural fibre from the plant required certain care to avoid damage. In the present experiments, initially the banana plant sections were cut from the main stem of the plant and then rolled lightly to remove the excess moisture. Impurities in the rolled fibres such as pigments, broken fibres, coating of cellulose etc. were removed manually by menas of comb, and then the fibres were cleaned and dried.This mechanical and manual extraction of banana fibres was tedious, time consuming, and caused damage to the fibre. Consequently, this type of technique cannot be recommended for industrial application. A special machine was designed and developed for the extraction of banana fibres in a mechanically automated manner. It consisted mainly of two horizontal beams whereby a carriage with an attached and specially designed comb, could move back and forth. The fibre extraction using this technique could be performed simply by placing a cleaned part of the banana stem on the fixed platform of the machine, and clamped at the ends by jaws. This eliminated relative movement of the stem and avoided premature breakage of the fibres. This was followed by cleaning and drying of the fibres in a chamber at 20oC for three hours. This fibres were then labeled and ready for lamination process.After extraction of fibre, weaving is done in the looms as per normal process like any other material.