Ginning Photos

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Cotton Ginning

The cotton gin at South Texas Ag Research (Uvalde, Texas) is a machine which separates leaves, lint, and burs from cottonseed, as is the case with commercial gins. This gin contains equipment which was standard gin equipment in the 1960s. The seed cotton harvested by commercial procedures is placed on a clean concrete surface and pulled 16 feet vertically then 12 feet laterally by suction into a 52-inch separator. This separator is a rotating drum which wipes cotton off a screen. The separator removes dust and leaf trash from the seed cotton. This dust and leaf trash are carried by air to be incinerated. Since there is no stick machine, this gin is capable of ginning only cotton which is spindle-picked. The seed cotton leaves the separator and drops into a cross auger which distributes cotton evenly across the top of a Mitchell 5-saw Super Champ Feeder. This feeder is a set of large saws, brushes, and rollers which separate almost all the burs and trash from the seed cotton. At the bottom of this feeder is a large auger which carries the entire trash fraction (cotton gin byproducts, bits of lint, leaves, and burs) out to the side of the feeder where the gin byproduct fraction is either caught in a large plastic-lined cloth bag (if this sample is required) or pulled by suction to be destroyed. Seed cotton falls directly from the feeder into the top of the Continental 90-saw gin stand, where 90 10-inch saws run between polished ribs to separate seed from lint. Lint is pulled by suction from the back of the gin stand and baled. Seed falls out the bottom of the gin stand into a six-inch auger, which carries seed from the bottom of the gin stand to a pit where the seed is packaged in a clean fashion. Cleaning is an exhaustive process which consists of blowing out all machinery with high-pressure compressed air. All parts of the gin are readily cleaned by this method.  For more information contact Mike Phillips at starwg@mecwb.com