Developing an intelligent automation and reporting system for fabric inspection machines

Abstract

In textile companies, the detection of defects and unacceptable areas of fabrics at the quality control stage has great importance for apparel production, although it is also a post-manufacturing operation for weaving and knitting mills, today it is still mostly being carried out on the guidance of human perception and sensory abilities. Such quality control operations are based on the attendant employee's detection of the defects and the unacceptable areas by visual inspection and scanning the overall fabric structure which is being transported on a brightly illuminated straight plane. The detected defects during the scanning operation are recorded on the defect charts and these outcomes subsequently are subjected to the quality control supervisor's evaluation and thereafter, it is decided whether the related inspection reports would exemplify an appropriate fabric to be used in production or not. In this study, it is aimed to develop a new system which enables to integrate the empirical paperwork-based reports that are still being commonly utilized by the majority of the textile companies in to the contemporary technology and also allows to compare such reports with the previous ones when it is necessary. The proposed system development consists of a fabric inspection machine which is equipped with a PLC-controlled digital display or in other words an intelligent control, and a web based software that enables the controller to analyze the reports comprehensively and simultaneously those of produced by this system, The system, which renders paperwork reports obsolete, allows the reports to be viewed on computer screens as soon as the inspection was completed. This feature ensures that all of the fabric rolls within the same order, multiple batches or bundles to be displayed on a single screen. Thus, it permits to determine the usability of the fabric for the production via employing the four-points system which is one of the prevailing methods for quality control procedures in the industry. Consequently, it is aimed to achieve significant time and labor savings in textile companies via utilizing this new developed system.