TEI: The future vision

The Textile Engineering Industry has a decisive role in offering back-up support to the user textile industry to achieve its projected Vision, says
C V Radhakrishnan

The frontier free trade in operation from January 2005 has made the concept of ‘global village’ meaningful to the world textile industry. It has opened up vast possibilities for the textile units to grow to their full potential and pursue aggressively for a larger share of the global trade. In order to achieve this objective, the textile sector has to rejuvenate and offer flawless goods, manufactured economically and with high efficiency.

The modern mechanics of growth are driven by technology. Added to this, exports give a lead. The textile sector can exploit these tools to the optimum through modernisation and expansion. The textile engineering industry has a decisive role in offering back-up support to the user textile industry to achieve its projected Vision.

Technology up-date

The TEI over the last five decades has been supportive in supplying its products manufactured with or without foreign collaborations or under joint ventures. It has built up substantial capacity to meet the requirements of the Indian textile industry. Over the last few years, due to lack of demand from the domestic textile industry the TEI could not expand its capacity or could bring in sophisticated foreign technology in certain segments of the industry. It has however, developed its own technology and kept pace with the technological developments taking place elsewhere in the world.

Let us examine the technological developments made in the range of products offered by the Indian textile machinery manufacturers in the cotton and manmade fibre systems:

A) Ginning equipment

l Fully mechanised and semi-mechanised roller ginning plant, pre-cleaning of seed cotton, automatic feeding of seed cotton into gins, single/double roller gins, automatic single stage, double box cotton bale press with oil hydraulic power pack having capacity of 22 bales per hour and 30-32 bales per hour, 158 saw gin machine with extractor cleaner feeder.

B) Preparatory and spinning machinery section

• Blow room machines from bale plucker to fine opener Flexiclean with setting adjustment, automatic feeding, optimal raw material utilisation and 1500 kg/hour production; models to produce upto 2000 kg/hour are also available.
• Chute feed card with maximum delivery speed of 300 mpm. Production ranges between 80-120 kg/hour.
• Lap Former with 4/4 spring loading drafting system, belt drive for drafting and creel zone of positive creel arrangement; Auto spool changer. Delivery speed upto 120 mtrs./minute with lap density of 60 to 80 grams/meter.
• Comber having a capacity to produce upto 1.3 tons/day (400 nips per minute), Auto piecing arrangement, state-of-the art waste collection system and online sliver quality monitoring.
• Twin delivery auto leveller super high speed/draw frame provides effective parallelisation of fibres with a 1 meter cv% of 0.4 for cotton and manmade blends (with independent heads) with digital auto levelling capable of running upto 1000 mts/minute; Electronic control of draw frames, PLCs sensors, AC servo drive for auto levellers, photocell systems for stop motion are all built in. Online quality monitoring.
• Speed frame with suspended flyers, automatic inbuilt stretch control with servo control for bobbin build, inverter control for main drive, etc with larger roving packages. Speed frame with raised heads of the rear flyer row with semi-automatic doffing and donning processes.
• Ring frame capable of running upto 25000 rpm with or without doffer, PLC control, inverter drive and SPINET system. Lifts from 160 mm to 210 mm, upto 1200 spindles per machine are available.
• RoCos compact yarn spinning system with several attractive features is available.
• Compact spinning machine for EliTe compact spinning system speed upto 25000 rpm mechanical, yarn count ranges from ne 12 - 160 with 70 mm gauge.
• Spinning accessories like fully automatic cot grinding machine, top roller treatment machine, eccentricity & taper tester machine, hydraulic cot mounting machine, pneumatic calendering machine, top roller greasing/degreasing machines, spindle lubricating machine, auto bobbin stripping machine.
• Spinning machinery parts and accessories like metallic card clothing, flat tops, lickerin wires, stripping fillets, spindles, rings, top rollers, flyers, cots, aprons, ring travellers, gears ball/roller/ needle bearings, conversion equipment, belts etc.

C) Yarn processing machinery and accessories

• Various models of draw texturising machine with mechanical speed upto 1500 mtrs/minute with auto doffing system;
• Air texturising machine with inverter drive system with mechanical speed upto 1000 mtrs/minute capable of texturising upto 4 ends with 4 input speeds and 2 sets of hot pins per position.
• Heavy duty ring twister upto 240 spindles per machine having spindle gauge from 144 to 240 mm with ring dia upto 180 mm.
• Two-for-one twister with maximum 240 spindles per machine with spindle gauge, spindle speed upto 14000 rpm for all spun yarn. The TFOs for synthetics, woollen and acrylic spinning segments are also available.
• Precision propeller assembly winder, precision cone winder, hank to cone/cheese winder, cone winder/assembly winder/draw winder.
• Automatic cone winder with automatic package doffing system, minimum energy consumption with high winding speed and maximum productivity.

D) Weaving machinery and accessories

• Direct warper for spun yarn; flanges between 1400 to 2300 mm, flange diameter 800 to 1400 mm, ‘V’ or ‘H’ parallel type of creel magazine and tailend. The machine can be operated with pneumatic or hydraulic braking system; speed upto 1500 mtrs./minute.
• Multi-cylinder sizing machine for spun yarn, zig-zag or vertical creel, upto 24 dryer cylinders in zig zag arrangement, winding width upto 3.8 mtrs.
• Single end sizing machine with cotton/blended, filament as well as jute yarn.
• Zero-twist filament yarn sizing system suitable for polyester/nylon; zero-twist or low twist; creel capacity upto 1660 ends, beamer speed 200 mpm, warping speed 300-500 mtrs./minute, sizing speed upto 300 mtrs/minute, average plant production capacity 3 tons per day.
• High speed sectional warping machine, constant warping and beaming speed; auto section advancing, hydraulic doffing and donning device, lost end memory and auto stop during beaming, printer interface. Automatic section control, warping speed upto 600 mpm depending on working width, beam flanged dia upto 1250mm.
• Heavy duty underpick loom.
• Double velvet loom, terry towel weaving loom.
• Automatic shuttle/cops change loom.
• Automatic pirn change loom.
• Narrow fabric machine, high speed needle loom with top mounting electronic jacquard.
• Flexible/rigid type rapier weaving machine to weave wide variety of fabrics upto 8 colours, weft insertion system upto 700 mtrs/minute.
• A number of parts and accessories like creels, warping beams/beam carriers, trolleys, reeds, healds, dobbies, mechanical jacquard, etc.

E) Processing and finishing machinery and accessories

• Singeing machines for yarns and fabrics
• Desizing machines
• Scouring/bleaching ranges
• Mercerizing machines
• Continuous dyeing range - open width batch type, dye padders with deflection control rollers and fully automatic dyeing jiggers.
• Rope type dyeing machines : (Often referred to jet dyeing or soft flow dyeing machine): Atmospheric (suitable for dyeing cotton and other natural fibres) and high temperature, high pressure (HTHP) suitable for polyester dyeing; capacities from 25 kgs. (sample dyeing) to 1250 kgs.
• Rotary screen printing machine for simultaneous printing upto 24 colours (preferred for shirts, dress materials etc)
• Flat bed screen printing machine (preferred for saree printing)
• Transfer printing machine
• Drying ranges for various processes
• Hot air stenters
• Calenders
• Pre-shrinking range/sanforising machines
• Fibre stamping machines.

Processing and finishing machines for use in woollen industry such as wool scouring plant, wool carbonising plant, continuous hank yarn dryer, hank yarn dyeing machine, baling press, yarn bundling machines, semi-continuous decatising machines.

F) Laboratory and electronic testing and monitoring equipment

A series of laboratory processing and finishing equipments with various technical features are produced in the country.

• Testing, monitoring and controlling equipments for fibres, yarns and fabrics are produced in the country such as foreign material contamination detector at the blow room, yarn evenness testers, yarn strength testers, online quality monitoring system, yarn clearer, loom eye etc.

The industry is continuously developing and upgrading its products through its own efforts or with the assistance of research organisations like IITs, Textile Research Associations etc. The machine designers being in constant touch with the R&D are usually on the look out of new models of the machines with a view to

a) Reducing labour complement

b) Increasing productivity

c) Minimising the requirement of utilities such as wastes, heat, energy, traction power, compressed air, hydraulic pressure, easy machine operation, space, saving machines, saving effluents, recovery heat energy and water and economising cost structure.

I have dealt in a fairly exhaustive manner about the technological developments made in the ranges of products available within the country, some of which are produced in collaboration with reputed manufacturers from developed countries.

It is high time that assistance from the Government of India through establishing a Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme for the Textile Engineering Industry similar to the one instituted for the textile industry is implemented at the earliest, to enable the TEI to invest and upgrade the technology as expeditiously as possible in order to meet the requirements of the textile industry.

The future vision of the TEI is to match world’s standard in the areas of hi-tech, automation and latest application of electronic and computer aided systems in the textile industry. A number of manufacturers of textile machinery and parts have acquired ISO 1400 accreditation.

It is hoped that if the present demand from the domestic textile industry is sustained or improved, the Textile Engineering Industry is ready to meet the challenges in the coming years by gearing itself to produce modern generation machines and equipment thereby assisting the domestic textile industry to achieve its desired goal. The TEI is sanguine in meeting its commitments coupled with efficient after-sales-service to the domestic textile industry as also to continue to export its products substantially.

The author is Advisor, TMMA(I)