Innovations: High Volume Instrument Testing
1960 — PCCA's first year of micronaire,
color, leaf and condition testing.
PCCA played a key role in the development of High Volume Instrument (HVI) testing to determine the fiber properties of cotton which revolutionized the cotton and textile industries. As its name implies, HVI determines the fiber properties of a bale of cotton more quickly and more accurately than the previous method of evaluating some of those properties by hand classing. The HVI system provides more information about a bale of cotton than the subjective hand classing method.
In 1960, PCCA and Motion Control, Inc., an instrument manufacturer in Dallas, Texas, began pioneering the development of a system to eliminate the potential for human error that existed with hand classing and expand the number of fiber properties that could rapidly be determined for each bale of cotton. The goal was to be able to provide seven fiber quality characteristics for every bale produced by PCCA’s farmer-owners. Laboratory instruments were available for determining most of the fiber properties, but they required up to 15 minutes or longer to determine each of the properties. The PCCA theory was based on economics: the faster cotton could be classed, the faster it could be marketed; and, the more accurate measurements of quality could result in a more adequate supply of cotton with fiber properties to meet the specific needs of textile mills.
Present day USDA cotton classing system.
By the mid-1960s, the United States Department of Agricultural (USDA) and the Cotton Producers Institute (now called Cotton, Incorporated) also became involved in the research required to bring this concept to the marketplace.
In 1968 three of the first five HVI lines were in operation in Lubbock, Texas. One line was at Texas Tech University’s International Textile Center and two at PCCA. These lines were the very earliest versions to have all seven-fiber properties combined into a single testing line and measure them in less than 20 seconds per test.
In 1980, USDA built a new classing office in Lamesa, Texas, (about 60 miles south of Lubbock) specifically designed only for instrument testing all of the cotton samples received at that office using the latest version of the HVI equipment. This was a daring step but was based on data collected and analyzed and improvements made in the HVI system during the previous 20 years. Although met with skepticism in the initial years by many in the cotton and textile industries, the HVI system prevailed, and USDA continued to install the instrument testing lines in all government cotton classing offices. In 1991, USDA used the HVI system on all the cotton provided to the department for classing. Today, HVI class data is accepted throughout the world and is the foundation on which cotton is traded.