A Glimpse Of The Latest Development Trend Of Automated Fiber Textile Inspection In The World

With the emergence of global resource integration, the demand for more effective quality inspection methods has witnessed an unprecedented growth.

In the automation process of textile processing, the automation of fiber inspection system is the most difficult.

Computer and scanning

Nowadays, automated fiber inspection systems all over the world contain adaptive neural networks.

The operator only needs to scan the system for a short period of high quality fabric, and the system can identify fabrics with relatively poor fiber quality.

This eliminates the need for complicated routine inspection procedures.

This has led to the formation of powerful joint computers with hundreds of specialized computer processors, ensuring the feasibility of some automated inspection systems.

Such systems are capable of finding and enumerating defects in various fabrics, including the following fibers: grey fabrics, sheets, clothing, household fabrics, industrial fabrics, tires, finished fabrics, dyed fabrics, denim and so on.

From this, we can get a glimpse of the development of automatic inspection technology in the world today.

Difference between manual inspection and automatic inspection

If the fabric is defective, the price of the textile will be reduced by 45% to 65%.

Early accurate inspection can ensure the reduction of consumables, which is an important factor in quality assurance.

With a visual fabric inspection system, a well-trained operator can detect all kinds of fabrics, find and identify defects accurately, and then classify them in turn.

However, the maximum concentration of artificial energy can last for 20 to 30 minutes.

After that, the operator will feel tired from time to time.

The premise for such a high concentration of energy is that the fabric should be sufficiently attractive.

The difference between manual and automatic inspection is that even if the operation is normal, the reproducibility of manual inspection is mostly less than 50%. The results of automated inspection system are more reliable and reproducible, and more objective than manual fabric inspection.

The latest test operation guidelines in the world

Generally speaking, fabric needs to pass 2/3 lighting mode, which is designed for reflective light and pmitted light inspection system.

During the inspection, the lighting mode is selected according to fabric thickness, defect type and fabric process.

In addition to light classification, you can also choose the 3 line to 6 line HD scanning system according to the width of the test. Under special circumstances, you can also use the 8 line HD scanning lens.

The lens continues to scan the fabric to check the deviation.

In this process, the machine is used to scan the fabric fibers. Once there is a deviation, the inspector who is one meter away from the fabric will look for the corresponding solution.

The inspection system is controlled by the operation terminal.

The operation terminal has detailed inspection parameters, and the necessary data is input and output by barcode reader.

All reports will pass through the operation terminal.

Complex image processing is completed by printed circuit board, which is developed for inspection system.

After the machine is checked, the detected defects will be displayed on the screen for quick and convenient manual analysis.

Online and offline integration

This means that there are two kinds of physical automation textile inspection system in the production process.

One is the online integration system - the test system is implanted into the real machine; the other is the online integration system, which contains the built-in fabric pmission function.

Any kind of integration has its advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage of the online system lies in its simple operating system and cheap machine structure, minimum floor area and low operating requirements - because the operator can operate the inspection system at the same time.

The disadvantage is that the production machine determines the speed of inspection, so the maximum input and output speed of the inspection system can not always be dominant.

For offline systems, the maximum inspection speed can be fully utilized.

The disadvantage is that the extra machine structure requires special pmission drive and higher requirements for employees.

Switzerland's latest detection system

The existing full automatic cloth inspection system of the company in Switzerland can test the fabric at 120m/ minute speed in the offline working environment, and the defect inspection has a resolution of 0.3 millimeters.

The test speed of the online system is 30m/ minutes, which can handle 110 to 440 centimeters of fabric width.

The company's automatic detection system is suitable for pmitted light and reflected light.

Some fabric defects can only be identified by projection light, while others are reflected light recognition.

Oil stains can only be identified by reflected light, while star marks are identified by pmitted light.

The automatic inspection system marks fabric defects with paper labels and ink.

Apart from fabric fibers, the system can identify and repair defects.

Basic fiber braided structure - cotton, blended cotton, wool, filament yarn, no grain fabric, denim fabric, single piece dyed fabric and monochrome fabric can be tested in the system.

However, the system can not detect changes in color changes, jacquard fabrics, fuzz fabrics (velvet and thick flannelette) and knitted fabrics.

The uniqueness of the automatic cloth inspection system is that it can classify defects into the matrix called fabric quality classification, which is similar to the fabric grading system for cotton fibers, which has two axes.

The longitudinal axis represents the difference between the defects and the horizontal axis shows the length of the defect.

The company says it is easy to distinguish between interference and non intrusive defects, and there is no possibility of omission.

Defect data can be stored in a random database to generate user required reports.

The optimization software of the system can improve the fabric quality.

The initial cost of the system is US $200 thousand.

Based on the optimization of labor saving, incision and customer oriented accuracy, the company expects the investment recovery period of the system to be one to two years.

Germany El bit monitoring system I-TEX

The German El bit vision system introduced the I-TEX system at the international textile machinery exhibition in Hannover, Germany.

It is the most authoritative competitor in automated optical inspection system.

The I-TEX system can be detected at the speed of 300m/min, and the width of controllable fiber fabric is 5m.

The software program of the system is designed to imitate the human visual system, and it can monitor the regular change patterns of normal fabrics and defective fabrics.

These changes will be analyzed for multiple inspection procedures to distinguish defects and random changes in fibers.

Once the defect is detected, the defect location and defect size on the horizontal axis and longitudinal axis will be recorded in the defect map, and the digital image will be back up for the system operator to check.

At present, four types of inspection and monitoring systems are listed, all of which are designed for monitoring requirements of various parts of the fiber weaving industry.

It includes: I-TEX, used for visual inspection and quality control of woven and knitted fabrics; PRIN-TEX is used to check the printing defects of fabrics; broken analyzer is used for filament defects of glass fiber; color change analyzer is used to check the incongruity of dyed fabrics.

These products use core monitoring and interpretation technology, and can also be used as other industrial uses: non textile and printing industries, which require inspection and quality control as well as textile industry.

Potential applications in the nonwovens include air filters, diapers, surgical clothing and other nonwoven products.

I-TEX system costs are based on many factors, such as fiber fabric usage, expected speed and fabric width.

The system sells at $10 to $65 million.

El bits revealed that the investment recovery period of the system ranged from six months to 2 years.

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Barker's unique inspection system

Unlike the El bit monitoring system and other products, the Barker company has a mobile scanning probe that can be placed in looms.

The I-TEX system and the automatic inspection system can be directly inserted into the embedded equipment to conduct a comprehensive inspection of the billet fibers, and the fabric can also be inspected at the outlet of the finished products.

Once serious defects or continuous defects are detected, the Barker system can stop the weaving process to reduce the unqualified products.

The defect example will prompt the defective loom, prevent the defect from appearing, and prompt the machine to pay close attention to the local defects.

Once looms stop working, the machine will inform the end-users.

The specific type and location of the defect will be presented at the terminal.

After analyzing the cause of the defect, the operator will issue instructions at the loom terminal, and the system will let loom operate again to produce more efficiency.

At the same time, all defects information, including defects and time pause, will be sent to the fabric quality database.

The Barker system scanning probe includes monitoring lens and lighting system.

The camera lens is based on complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology.

The lighting system is designed to achieve the best inspection of woven structural defects.

The scanning speed of the probe is 18cm/s.

Its unique computing program is run by internal design processing programs and photo processing industrial computers.

Embedded software is the heart of the system, and the dedicated hardware designed by the company.

The main features of the software are as follows: lens and illumination calibration create conditions for warp / weft density and texture adjustment, picture processing calculation program, boundary inspection and fabric defect compression coding image storage integration.

The system is inexpensive and can detect wide 280cm fabrics.

For double sided looms (maximum 560cm), the scanning system will acquire scanned information with two camera images.

The license price for monitoring software is US $25 thousand.

In order to predict the investment recovery period, Barker will take the following advantages into consideration: the reduction of manual inspection after the completion of the fabric, the reduction of inspectors, the reduction of processing and the reduction of defective products.

It can be seen that installation of 100 looms costs only US $520 thousand.

The company expects to save $200 thousand a year, and the investment will be fully recovered in 2.6 years.

Prospects of automated inspection system

With the emergence of global sourcing, the demand for more effective quality inspection systems will increase unprecedentedly.

Fiber textile industry is in urgent need of a comprehensive and reliable method to test the quality of its products, so automated inspection system arises at the historic moment.

It is worth mentioning that it takes years to develop an excellent manual inspector, and the automation process can be completed and trained in a few weeks.

The system shows that the map is provided by the automatic inspection system and marked with the exact location of the defect.

Even if some companies are unwilling to lay off staff, the automated inspection system has economic advantages in view of the number of fabrics classified and the number of customers repatriated due to quality defects.

Developing countries like China and India have gradually adopted such automated systems.

There is evidence that products should occupy the commanding heights of the market and obtain quality assurance. Advanced automated fiber inspection system is a necessary condition.