Spinnweberei Uhingen (Germany) goes for Barco's Cyclops On-loom Inspection System
The weaving mill of Spinnweberei Uhingen in Uhingen, Germany, produces more than 10 million square meters of cotton fabric a year on 36 Dornier air jet looms. The company produces technical fabrics mainly as abrasive carriers and rubber blankets, which are used in offset printing machines.
After having seen Barco's Cyclops On-loom inspection system at ITMA in Paris in June 1999, the company was the first to order a trial installation. The first system was installed on a batching motion. The company was impressed with the performance of the system and purchased a second installation in February 2001. This system was mounted inside the Dornier weaving machine.
After an extensive testing period on different types of fabric, Spinnweberei Uhingen finally decided to install Cyclops on all its looms. Between now and mid 2002, all looms will be equipped with the Cyclops system, mounted inside the Dornier looms.
The Cyclops system stops the loom if a severe defect is detected. This avoids the production of many meters of second quality. The system generates a piece map showing the defect location in the fabric and for each defect a picture is available. This gives weavers and inspectors a precise quality overview of each woven piece.
At Spinnweberei Uhingen, all Cyclops units will be connected to Barco's WeaveMaster monitoring system. Besides efficiency monitoring, this system makes quality information for each piece of fabric being produced, available in real time.
Says Dipl.Ing. Georg Mayer, weaving mill manager at Spinnweberei Uhingen : The system detects about 80% of all defects in the fabric. This is much more than an operator can ever see. We expect to eliminate manual inspection in the future in spite of a very sensitive type of technical fabric. Cost saving will come from producing less seconds and reduced labor cost. This will give us a pay-back time of about two years.
Barco expects that in a few years from now, all looms producing standard fabric, will be equipped with an automatic On-loom inspection system.
Read more about Cyclops
Find out how Uhingen works with CYCLOPS
