Textile industry is resource intensive and is often criticized for its environmental performance. Textile processes rely heavily on water, energy, and synthetic dyes and chemicals. Where it is noted that this Industry is consuming 1 trillion gallons of water, 33 trillion gallons of oil, and 20 billion pounds of chemicals -(Cotton Incorporated). Where the Machines play a vital role in controlling the consumption of the above natural resources as well as controlling the pollution of air, water, environment & ecological aspects; and also conservation of energy, lubricants, dyes, chemicals, etc.
Manufacturing technology is not what it used to be a decade ago. Today’s increasingly automated and software driven industries have reduced human intervention to pressing only a few buttons in some cases. The application of advanced technologies in manufacturing such as nanotechnology, cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT) is changing the face of manufacturing in ways unimaginable a few decades ago. In addition to cutting the costs, these technologies create speed, precision, efficiency and flexibility for manufacturing companies.
It’s no secret that OEMs are looking to build more “intelligence” into mobile and industrial machines. The goal is to make the equipment they sell more productive and efficient, safer, and easier to operate and maintain. Further marrying electronic controls and software with hydraulics, pneumatics and mechanical systems equating to lower fuel consumption, lower emissions, faster cycle times, safer operation, easy-to-access data metrics and condition.
Equally important, the basis of competition is shifting toward delivering excellence in service and parts management. The digital revolution is now breaching the walls of manufacturing as it continues to disrupt media, finance, consumer products, healthcare, and other sectors.
Indeed, the explosion in data and new computing capabilities—along with advances in other areas such as artificial intelligence, automation and robotics, additive technology, and human-machine interaction—are unleashing innovations that will change the nature of manufacturing itself.
Industry and academic leaders agree that digital manufacturing technologies will transform every link in the manufacturing value chain from research and development, supply chain, and factory operations to marketing, sales, and service.
Digital connectivity among designers, managers, workers, consumers, and physical industrial assets will unlock enormous value and change the manufacturing landscape forever.
Consider traditional car manufacturers and Uber, which are both—at the highest level—in the business of moving people around.
Car makers meet that need on the floors of factories and showrooms, using a century of manufacturing experience.Uber meets people’s transportation needs not with steel, glass, rubber, and sales people but with data, matching individual riders and vehicles via smart phones. Barely five years into its existence, it is valued at about $50 billion.
Uber’s data, algorithms, and enormous growth prospects have already made it more valuable than all of the physical assets, intellectual property, and brand names of some of the world’s biggest car manufacturers.
Further with the application of 3D printing technology it is now possible to produce almost any component using metal, plastic, mixed materials and even human tissue.
Presently Indian production of textile machines is 1.2 billion USD against 2.7 billion USD market size India Exports 0.5 billion USD and Imports 2.1 billion USD.
This Industry has a huge supply chain of Ginning, Spinning, Weaving & its Preparatory, Wet –Processing, Garment, Apparel and Fashion. As the field of the subject is very vast the content of this article is restricted to the Technological Development in the design aspects of Weaving & Weaving Preparatory machines and their Lubrication systems to grow green. Lubricants and Lubrication plays a very vital role in this Industry considering variety of machines are working with different speeds, loads, under different environments of humidity, temperature, chemicals, fumes, steam, fluff, etc. and accordingly a remarkable development have been taken place in the grades and properties of lubricants as well as its application system.
Weaving Loom Shed
While noise pollution is the main concern in a Weaving shed, while the discharge of water with chemicals in sizing is a headache in the weaving preparatory sector. In the looms, shuttle picking motions which is supposed to be the heart of the loom and so the noise producing motion has been replaced by various lighter medium technologies like projectile, rapier, water and air-jets. [Fig-1 & 1(a)]. Shuttle of about half kg. weight was considered to be the heaviest carrier of the weft, consuming highest energy and maximum travel time. It is now replaced with lighter or no weight and faster mediums.
Further the replacement of plastic/leather material used as a shock absorbent by a Zama Buffer and Hydraulic Dampers [(Fig-2 & 2(a)] and also introduction of Special Weltac Oil have considerably reduced noise due to banging of picking stick and picking nose with picking bowl, further enhancing the life of these spares.
The crank beat up motion, being additionally noise producing, is now converted to cam motions. [Fig-3 & 3 (a)]. The basic principle of Common Drive is shifted to Individual drive and at the same time introduction of compact and effective trapezoid belts replacing the conventional flat, v-belts, resulted in reduction of speed losses due to slippages, and lead to effective loom stoppage.
The functioning of Secondary Motions like Take-up and Let-off through mechanical linkages controlled by one point Tappet motion is now separately controlled through Servo motors thus executing the action very fast and further saving lubricants and electrical power, further preserving noise at the lowest level.
The lengthy linkage of Cam, roller and levers working on frictional principle as a driving motion in the Shedding Assembly is replaced by a direct drive through a one piece cam of steel in oil bath [Fig-4 & 4(a)] and levers having a positive drive to the heald frames, by providing all these assemblies outside the loom at one side thus resulting to be User Friendly to the operative and also reducing wear and tear, downtime for lubrication and manual intervention.
Further, open oil holes are converted to oil baths/oil reservoirs [Fig-5 & 5 (a)] and self lubricated bearings, which apart from reducing the consumption and contamination of lubricants also helps in reducing the heat generated due to friction created among the high speed spares, thus further reduces the machine downtime and human intervention.
The introduction of Super speed Shuttleless looms have demanded an effective lubricants and their application systems as in Projectile Shuttleless loom where high viscosity oil does not centrifuges away but remain on fast moving chain and avoids transfer of heat generated by chain on to projectile; while in Rapier looms force circulation lubrication system is effective at all assemblies; and in Air-jet looms the Oil Circulating system with filters help in sustaining the status of lubricants inherently.
Weaving Preparatory Section
The developments in attending the broken thread manually on conventional common drive winding machine to individual spindle driven with a knotting and splicing systems have remarkably increased the productivity, product quality, wear and tear of spares due to idle spindle running, lubricants and proved to be User-friendly. The incidences of costly Bakelite drums getting damaged on the mechanically operated systems on the conventional machines due to sharp free falling of the cradle over the drum have been controlled by a cradle damping unit on the developed machines with a high performance lubricants resulting in a smooth and steady descending of the cradle over the drum. [Fig-6 & 6(a)]
With the introduction of the pneumatically controlled hydraulic circulatory system over the Developed Warping machines have resulted in the effective braking system [Fig-7 & 7 (a)] of the guide rollers and warping beams running at very high speeds and had also made a provision of automatically loading and unloading of heavy and huge warping beams which is unsafe and laborious as done manually on the conventional machines.
Thus while concluding we can say that the introduction of Technological Development in the design aspects of Weaving & Weaving Preparatory machines and their Lubrication systems
have shown a remarkable reduction in the annual consumption of lubricants in comparison to those by conventional textile machines as given in table below, thus contribution to the National gain and GDP of the Country.
N. D. Mhatre, presently working as Director General (Tech), at Indian Textile Accessories & Machinery Manufacturers’ Association (ITAMMA), a Textile Technologist, has served the Textile Industry for last 31 years in the field of R & D, Consultancy services, Training Programmes, Machinery Maintenance Audits, Seminars, Workshops, Business-cum- Study Tours, Projects, market surveys etc.
Received ‘ G.D. Birla’ and ‘C.D. Foundation’ Awards and was awarded “National Award” by Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, President of India and “The NCPEDP- Shell Helen Keller Award by Mr. P. Chidambaram, Union Finance Minister on 6th Dec’2004 at New Delhi.
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