Thanks for giving us a tour of the cotton process... When we go down to AL. to visit DD and family, we have seen them harvesting the cotton and are amazed how they pack the cotton into bales... We have brought back a plant with cotton still on it to show GKs. DIL is a elementary teacher so she took it for her class...Thanks

Some 50 years ago I worked in an acrylic mill for 12 months;
first it went thought a picker machine then a breaker machine then pin draft machine. It came out of each machine thinner continuous strands of fibers. It fell into a sprigged can about 3’ high in circles layered on top of each other in a spiral. When full we removed the cans and sent them to the slubbers to be spun onto 1’ wooden bobbins. Each machine has lots of multiple “steel combs that straightened the fibers as it passed through the machines.
The breaker had about 4 cans about 2” thick feeding into it and the out put was about 1” thick continuous fiber rope.
The pin draft machines had about 6 can each side feeding in and came out about ¾” thick into 4 cans.
Then the bobbins were sent to the spinners and many strands were spun into thread bobbins.

I worked in the wool mill about 6 months across the street. It had the same set up but the smell was raw wool. They had the prettiest hard wood floors you will ever see. The oil from wool kept them so nice! But there was no fibers flying around the air.
Both factories had to keep the humidity high and in NC it was already high.
Being from NM and dry dry,,,,I never felt dry the18 months I lived there.

Interesting! Thanks for posting!