Page 97 - Industrial Cutting of Textile Materials

84 Industrial Cutting of Textile Materials

6.7 Automated fabric fault registration and management
systems

Automated spreading systems can determine textile faults during the spreading pro-
cess in a similar manner to that of manual spreading processes. Splice marks placed in
a marker and a fault registration system are used to carry out this process.
Spreading machines may be equipped with fault registration systems to minimize
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fabric waste (Gerber ‘Flaw Management System’). During the spreading process,
faults are identified visually on the face side of the material by a spreading operator.
Using a joystick and laser beam, the operator marks the fault and determines its po-
sition on a ply and also on its marker on the screen. The operator can assess whether
the fault affects any cut component and makes the decision whether or not to leave the
fault in the spread. The spreading machine can automatically cut off the unusable part
of the fabric and record it. It then moves to the place of the corresponding splice mark
on the cutting table (see Section 4.5.2) to continue the spreading process. However, the
costs of specially developed fault management software and the necessary changes in
the spreading control system are comparatively high, and many companies still prefer
to use traditional manual splicing principles in the automated spreading process.

6.8 The advantages of automated spreading process

The main advantages of the automated spreading process are the capacity to sig-
nificantly increase productivity and reduce the work load of the spreading operator.
Productivity depends upon several factors: the length of the spread and number of
plies within it, the spreading speed (which is dependent on the fabric properties), the
spreading mode, the length of the spreading table, the fabric quality, the time needed
to cut the fabric ply and to change a fabric roll, and the work efficiency of the operator.
Automated spreading machines lay long spreads more quickly and to a higher level
of quality than is possible by manual spreading. When fabric is spread manually, it
may be stretched through pulling (the same problem may appear using spreading ma-
chines without movable fabric feeding systems). Only one operator is employed in
performing the automated spreading process. Many of the work steps are carried out
automatically: unwinding a fabric, fabric ply cutting, alignment of fabric edges, length
and ply counter, etc.

6.9 Future trends

Although the spreading technology using standard spreader has not change much
during 30 years (still, a carriage with the fabric roll moves over the table and spreads
and cuts the fabric), the companies constantly improve their products to easy work pro-
cess and to increase spreading quality. During the last period of time, new engineering