Page 100 - Industrial Cutting of Textile Materials

7
Manual cutting of textile materials

7.1 Introduction

The manual cutting process ensures cutting of all kind of textile materials. In
comparison with automated cutting, its productivity is much lower, but the equipment
is much more less expensive, and the repair and maintenance costs are small. For these
reasons, the manual cutting process is widely used in small production units. It is also
used in medium and large manufacturing enterprises when working with complex fab-
rics. The accuracy of cutting depends on the type of equipment used and on the skills
and experience of the cutting operators. The greatest problem of the manual cutting
process is its inability to eliminate displacement of fabric plies in a spread during the
cutting process.

7.2 Characteristics of the manual cutting process

Taking into account the technical limitations of the cutting equipment, a fabric spread
is processed by different cutting machines performing sequential cutting steps. These
are the following:

Dividing large spreads into smaller parts using movable cutting machines.
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Rough cutting of the components by movable cutting machines, leaving a fabric allowance
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around their contours.
Fine cutting of the components along their contours, simultaneously cutting notches using
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movable and static cutting machines.
Placing of drill marks to mark dart ends, pocket placement points, and other marks in the
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inner area of the components. Specialized drilling machines are used.
7.2.1 Dividing a spread into smaller parts

A large spread is first divided into smaller parts for ease of movement and processing
with various types of cutting machines. The cutting process is started from a precisely
aligned side of the spread (see Section 4.2.4) so as to cause the minimum deformation
of its plies. The smaller parts of the spread are conditionally formed as rectangles (see
Fig. 7.1).
From the cut down parts of the spread, the following blocks of components are
separated:
Blocks of large, similar length components (see Fig. 7.2, white components);
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Blocks of small-size components (see Fig. 7.2, dark grey components);
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Blocks of fusible components (see Fig. 7.2, light grey components).
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Industrial Cutting of Textile Materials. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102122-4.00007-X
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