Technology for rapidly determining cotton fiber length distributions using single fiber measurements has been developed jointly by USDA-ARS and Schaffner Technologies (now Zellweger Uster, Inc.). The instrument (AFIS) includes a mechanism for mechanically opening a hand-fed ribbon of fibers so that individual fibers can be presented aerodynamically to an electro-optical system for measuring fiber length. Length measurements for 10,000 individual fibers can be obtained in approximately 5 minutes. Although there are measurements for the entire fiber length distribution, measurements of mean length, upper half mean length, and short fiber content are particularly important. Measurements of mean length and upper half mean length can be made rapidly with other instruments, but instruments to rapidly measure short fiber content have not been available until now. Evaluation results show good correlations between measurements made using conventional laboratory methods and measurements using AFIS.
