Page 128 - Industrial Cutting of Textile Materials

Automated cutting of textile 9

materials ☆

9.1 Introduction

Although manual cutting is still widely used in garment manufacturing because of its
wide application and low production costs, it is time- and labour-intensive and offers
limited productivity. For these reasons, new and more efficient cutting methods have
been developed and introduced in the production process.
The die cutting is one more method used for cutting textiles. The first die
cutting machines were invented in the early 1900s. The cutting process was car-
ried out by fixed and rigid dies that are metal structures in the shape of the perim-
eter of the cut components. The cutting process was more accurate; it made more
economic use of the material and was much faster and simpler than the manual
knife cutting process.
However, die cutting also has serious disadvantages. It has limited flexibility and
can only be used where the type of component does not require frequent change as
new die tools have to be made for each style. Even small design changes require new
tools. Die cutting was widely used in different industries for several decades, but as
new market tendencies have demanded a broadening of the diversity of styles and
shorter production time, it ceased to be efficient. As die cutting could no longer meet
new requirements, the need to develop new cutting methods reappeared.
Die cutting presses were replaced with a new type of numerically controlled (NC)
machines that performed a continuous cut by means of a specialized cutting device
that moved around the profile of the object. The first NC machines were built in the
1940s and 1950s. These early servo-mechanisms were augmented with analogue and
digital computers, creating modern computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine
tools. In modern CNC systems, end-to-end component design is highly automated us-
ing CAD/CAM programmes. These programmes produce a computer file that extracts
the commands required to operate a particular machine and loads them into the CNC
machine for production.
Continuous cutting by computer-controlled systems offers several advantages over
the die cutting process: significantly greater flexibility of production; increased cut-
ting quality; capacity to handle large orders, samples, preproduction runs, and small
and medium orders; economic use of material; no investment in traditional hard tool-
ing; capacity to cut components of either simple or complex shape; use of CAD/CAM
systems for designing patterns; and lead and control cutting processes.

☆ We thank Eastman Machine Company, Buffalo, NY, United States and Ms. E. McGruder for their kind
support in development of the chapter.
Industrial Cutting of Textile Materials. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102122-4.00009-3
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.