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| Issue date:01/10/2008 |
| ATA Journal for Asia on Textile & Apparel - Oct 2008 Issue |
| Source:Journal for Asia on Textile & Apparel |
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Amid uncertain economic outlook, more Asian textile manufacturers might look for new, advanced technologies of digitization to enhance efficiency and productivity, and to better equip themselves for future economic ups and downs
by Adrian Wilson
Digitization is representing an object, image or data, often by a set of binary systems. The result is called digital representation. In contrast, analog signals are often highly variable, making reproduction, representation and transfer of data difficult. By digitization, some processes in the textile production can be made simpler, including identifying and reproducing color, printing of patterns and images, as well as producing designs, patterns and embroidery from design to mass production.
The adoption of digitization in the global textile industry is so far in its early stage. However, as fast fashion continues sweeping through the globe, vertical integration (e.g. from making yarns to garment) may no longer be competitive enough for textile and apparel manufacturers. The future battleground could lie in an intangible field where manufacturers explore new possibilities to design, communicate and produce more efficiently by digitizing the data.
Digital finishing will completely change the world of advanced textiles, according to Gerrit Koele, Project Manager at Netherlands-headquartered TenCate.
TenCate is a multinational company with 2007 sales of 880 million euros and 4,500 employees worldwide. It combines textile technology and chemical processes in developing and manufacturing specialist materials, with world leading positions in protective fabrics, space and aerospace composites, armour composites, geosynthetics and synthetic turf.
Early this year, TenCate acquired 75% of the shares of Xennia Technology, based in Cambridge in the UK, primarily in seeking to accelerate the opportunities for the use of inkjet technology in the production of technical textiles.
Xennia is an independent industrial inkjet technology company with integration, chemistry, engineering and hardware knowledge and creates inkjet solutions for several industrial applications. The company supplies high-performance XenJet printers and proprietary inks.
The company also has strong partnerships with leading companies in the market, including print head manufacturers Xaar, Hewlett-Packard and FujiFilm Dimatix.
"Inkjet technology has the potential to completely replace existing finishing and coating technologies and create new materials for the technical textiles sector," said Mr Koele at the IFAI Advanced Textiles conference held in Berlin, Germany, this June.
Within the Digitex R&D project, TenCate and Xennia, together with other companies and institutes, are working to develop digital inkjet technologies to create breakthrough innovations in technical textiles for the European sector.
The project is industry initiated and led, with a total budget of 12.7 million euros, with 6.8 million euros coming from the EU. It involves a total of 16 companies, in addition to nine research institutes and universities across Europe.
The Digitex process envisages precisely automated deposition of chemicals in finishing, linked to mass customising apparel units |
Mr Koele, a project manager of the Digitex project, explained that the objective of the Digitex project is to develop a breakthrough technology based on digitally micro-disposing fluids onto textiles, enabling high-speed protective functionalisation. Highly effective concentrated non-toxic compounds are being employed in a continuous process.
The final technology will be made possible by the realisation of three main sub-objectives of Digitex:
The development of a new range of chemicals and agents to achieve traditional functionalities by means of fluidic systems suitable to be micro-disposed/patterned over a textile substrate, as well as the creation of new functionalities obtained by the process.
The design and development of a mechatronic system with the ability to dispose the required amount of functional fluid with a specified pattern over a textile substrate -- at a speed that is compatible with the textile industry.
Initial feedback on the process design allowing implementation of the definition of the jetting system in terms of macro-features, and quantified in respect of the micro-features of functionalised fluid samples.
Textile processes might get much easier
“Inkjet is increasingly being seen as more than a printing technique,” said Mr Koele. “The important benefits in an industrial environment will be greatly in simplifying manufacturing processes, increasing productivity, reducing operating costs, mass customization, flexibility of design and the creation of miniature devices.”
Key areas of interest for Digitex members include the surface treatment of chromic materials, controlled release materials and anti-bacterial and anti-static treatments.
Work to date has centred on the use of Xaar 760 and Xaar 1001 inkjet heads at line speeds up to 20 m/min and with control of variable drop sizes of between four and 120 picolitres.
“The process we are working on involves 3D drop positioning in order to precisely achieve a tailored depth of deposition into a given substrate,”Mr Koele explained. “The focus is on understanding the behaviour of drops in a substrate and a key research task now is modelling this.”
The ability to predict the behaviour of chemicals at such a level, he added, could lead to huge benefits in terms of cost savings, in being able to pinpoint exactly the amount of a certain chemical substance to achieve a desired effect. This, in turn, would bring tremendous ecological benefits.
“Being in complete control down to six picolitres would mean that the highest possible savings were completely automated into the process,” said Mr Koele.
“At the outset of Digitex we asked ourselves a number of questions,” said Mr Koele. “Can digital printing replace existing finishing processes? Can it enable new products? Will it significant environmental benefits? Will it save on costs? Is it the enabling technology for mass customization?
“The answer to all of these, we believe, is yes,” he said.
Online monitoring done with electronic sensors
Online quality control of production is another area where advanced software comes into its own.
The P-Sensor introduced by Loepfe as part of its YarnMaster Zenit digital online quality control systems, for example, can now rapidly and effectively solve the problem of yarn contamination by white or transparent polypropylene, which causes production and quality losses.
“The contamination of cotton with synthetic foreign matter results mainly from contaminated cotton fields and packaging remnants,” explained the company marketing manager Werner Schläpfer. “During spinning preparation, such foreign debris becomes smaller and more evenly distributed.”
Foreign matter elimination when opening the bale, he added, can only reduce the cut numbers in the winding process by around 10%.
“Experience shows that every fifth machine stop during sectional warping and beam warping is due to polypropylene contamination. Yarn strength is reduced because there are fewer fibers in the cross-section, and in addition, hooking can cause machine standstills. ”
The later the standstill occurs in the process, the higher the costs incurred.
As the yarn passes the P-Sensor, the fibers exchange electrons with the sensor, causing what is referred to as the “triboelectric effect”. It is continuously electrically measured.
“The YarnMaster Zenit sensing heads can now cover a really wide range of yarns, whereas in the past a number of different heads were required to go from Ne 4 up to Ne 320 counts,” said Mr Schläpfer.
Barco, headquartered in Belgium, and Loepfe now part of the Italian ITEMA Group, are international leaders in the supply of automation and quality improvement concepts for the textile industry, and one of its latest installations has been at the Birla Century plant in Gujarat, India, for Century Textiles, a leading producer of shirting, suiting and denim fabric.
The BarcoVision integrated manufacturing execution system connects the spinning department, the warp preparation department, the weaving machines, the finishing machines, the dye house and the inspection department.
Yarn inventory software handles the movement of yarns through the plant and traceability software allows a complete tracing of each fabric roll produced in the mill. In total, more than 700 production machines are being monitored by the system.
In the spinning department, the company employs Spinmaster and Millmaster software to monitor the daily yarn production, in addition to monitoring quality through the use of Loepfe Zenit yarn clearers on the winding machines.
The system also uses BarcoVision’s wireless technology in the spinning, weaving, finishing and inspection departments, driven by the Spinmaster, Weavemaster and Qualimaster software. In the dyehouse, a fully integrated Sedomaster/Colormaster has been installed and all yarn dyeing machines are equipped with the latest SM2500 controllers based on OPC server technology, allowing Ethernet based networking with the Sedomaster central system.
An OPC server is a software application that acts as an application programming interface (API) or protocol converter. It plays a similar role to that of a printer driver in enabling a computer to communicate with an ink jet printer.
Also recently introduced for the dyehouse is the Spectrorama system from Italy Tecnorama, designed to carry out the spectrometric analysis of a dyeing cycle, with simultaneous readings of the dye-bath and textile material.
By coupling the spectrometric analysis of exhaustion curves and the variations of the single concentrations of dyestuffs for both the dye liquor and the textile material, the system makes it possible to acquire an exact picture, at any time, of the progress of the dyeing cycle in question.
Tecnorama says that instruments currently on the market provide only a simple spectrometric analysis of the dye liquor and that the exhaustion curves, from the reading by transmittance of the dye liquor, do not always manage to give correct information on what is really happening to the textile material during a dyeing process. In particular, appraisal of the behaviour of dispersed dyestuffs, using just the liquor reading system, does not allow a correct analysis, since the chromatic behaviour of these dyestuffs changes considerably as liquor temperature rises, so much that it no longer appears recognisable or ascribable to the original shades. In this sense, says Tecnorama, the numerous trials performed, in several phases and with different classes of dispersed dyestuffs, have given anomalous, absolutely unreliable results.
But with the direct spectrometric analysis of the textile material, applying the reflectance technology, excellent exhaustion analysis results are obtained for this class of dyestuffs. The direct spectrometric analysis of the textile material, during the dyeing process, also allows a correct evaluation of the final shade attained by the material during dyeing and after various washing operations.
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| Copyright © Adsale Publishing Limited. Any party needs to reprint any part of the content should get the written approval from Adsale Publishing Ltd and quote the source "ATA Journal for Asia on Textile & Apparel", Adsale Textile English Website - www.AdsaleATA.com. We reserve the right to take legal action against any party who reprints any part of this article without acknowledgement. For enquiry, please contact Editorial Department. |
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| Copyright © Adsale Publishing Limited. Any party needs to reprint any part of the content should get the written approval from Adsale Publishing Ltd and quote the source "ATA Journal for Asia on Textile & Apparel", Adsale Textile English Website - www.AdsaleATA.com. We reserve the right to take legal action against any party who reprints any part of this article without acknowledgement. For enquiry, please contact Editorial Department. |
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