Recent development in textiles and Indian industry

The abolition of decades old quota regime in the international textile and clothing trade has thrown up new challenges as well as opened up new opportunities for the Indian textile industry, says Shishir Jaipuria

As per the vision statement prepared by the ICMF for the textile sector, the Indian textile industry has the potential to become an industry of $85 billion by 2010 from the current size of $36 billion. This growth can be achieved by the expansion of domestic as well as export segments. Textile export could reach $ 40 billions mark by 2010 from present 12 billion dollar level. During last six months performance on export front can be considered satisfactory. In order to achieve the potential, textile industry has to shift towards value added products. The greatest value addition in textile chains is generated by the apparel segment. In order to produce quality apparels, all the segments i.e. processing, fabric manufacturing and spinning will need upgradation.

Technological developments

There has been rapid development in machinery/technology during last decade. A brief description of modern developments in various areas are given below.

Spinning

Productivity in blowroom line has shot up to 800 kg/hr with a provision to work 3 mixings simultaneously. The modern blowroom has automatic bale opener, integrated mixer and cleaning devices to process wide variety of cottons. In case of modern carding machine instead of one licker-in, multiple licker-ins are incorporated in series. There are more stationary flats. Maintenance free digital drives are used for feed roll, doffer, web doffing and can change. The entire card clothing can be removed with few operations. Various devices like nep control, flat control and waste control etc are incorporated.

In latest drawframe machine, delivery speed upto 1000 mt/minute are achievable with an option of automatic draft control mechanism which dispenses need for gear change for controlling draft and delivery speed. In some machines individual deliveries can be controlled independently. One supplier provides draw frame which can be linked with carding machine. It is claimed that due to digital autoleveller the accuracy is very high on an average one meter CV of sliver can be controlled below 0.4%.

In case of combers speed upto 400 nips/min is achievable. Modern comber can give a production upto 1.3 tonnes/day. Touch screens display system is provided. The display includes production data, process setting, machine parameters setting and fault message display. Some machines come fully assembled in 4 modules to save installation time.

New generation speed frame are fully electronic in all the operations. All the working parameters can be set on electronic panel. Bobbin size 6” x 16” or 7” x 16” can be taken. There is choice of manual or auto doffing. Machines are available upto 160 spindles capacity thereby substantial saving in the operational cost.

In modern ring spinning system winding geometries are further optimised resulting less winding tension. Therefore higher draft upto 80 are achievable with higher spindle speed (above 20000 rpm). Inverter drive for spindles, independent spindle ring rail and drafting system drives, fast doffing system with no trailing ends are some of the other features of modern ring frames. Ring frame upto 1344 spindles are available. In today’s rotor spinning system, different yarn can be spun in different side of the machine. It is possible to get package of variable density. All the technical parameters and machine setting can be controlled by computer. In the modern rotor machine it is possible to prepare a package with 30% higher package density than conventional rotor machine.

In modern winding machine path of ring cop from bottom to winding head is further optimised. Therefore, better control of winding tension results in lower increase in hairiness. The flexible knotting cycle together with customised acceleration dynamics helps in production optimisation. The directly controlled cylinder inverter and suction motor inverter helps in energy conservation. Latest vortex spinning system produced by Murata can spin cotton yarn at a speed of 400 mt/min. The technology was earlier used for spinning synthetic blended yarn only.

The newly developed DREF spinning system can produce various types of core and multi-component yarns. The drafting unit can handle all types of synthetic fibres such as aramid, preoxidised fibre, polyamide, phenol resin fibres and melamine fibres. The machine is capable of operating with several cores. The production rate is as high as 250 mtr/min and fineness of yarn can be from 0.5 to 25 nm.

Weaving

The main features of modern weaving preparatory/ weaving machines are summarised as under :

• Machinery manufacturers of both weaving preparatory and weaving machines have improved upon their technology keeping in mind to produce fault free fabric for the garment sector.
• Most of the machines have electronic control and micro-processors which monitors and control the machine function to meet fabric quality requirement and changes in design styles.
• Maintenance of machine has become easier due efficient lubrication system and better machine design and replacement of mechanical gadgets with electronic control system.
• There is a definite trend to source the components and auxiliary equipment from the reputed manufacturers rather than preparing themselves, thereby reducing the cost of the machines.
• In modern rapier looms weft insertion rate ranges from 1200 - 1500 mt/min. Some of the looms have provision to weave wide variety of fabrics.
• In case of Airjet weaving machine weft insertion rate is still higher and ranges from 1800-2500 mt/min.
• Modern sizing machine has provision for uniform size pick up across the warp sheet with and minimum hairiness and loss in elongation. These are controlled by temperature control and moisture control systems. Squeeze pressure can be controlled by programmable controller to synchronise the squeezing at all the speeds. Stretch monitoring device is provided to control the stretch.

Knitting

In recent times the quality requirement imposed on a knitting factory by its customer have become even more precise due to greater emphasis on the reproducibility in case of repeat order. Typically a modern knitting machine has following features as:

• Automatic calculation of fabric take down speed, feeders per course, stitch/cm and elongation
• Automatically controlled thread infeed by entering the required thread infeed per cm
• Automatic control of height adjustment through computer
• Automatic monitoring of yarn infeed and yarn tension
• Computer facilitated pattern preparations for production of the desired pattern through user friendly software.

Processing

New generation processing machine incorporates microprocessor controls. Various process parameters can be programmed in microprocessor for strict adherence of processing conditions. Apart from good control, machines are also energy efficient and features are incorporated for the reduction of consumption of chemicals, water and steam etc. The developments are also taking place keeping environment requirement and eco-friendly processing while manufacturing the textile products and safer conditions for those involved in the manufacturing.

Quality control/process control

In the area of cotton testing new generation instruments are mostly High Volume Instruments (HVI). These HVI are equipped with automatic sampling. In addition to testing of length, strength and fineness parameters they also measure short fibre content and maturity index values. It is claimed that maturity values are quite accurate. Instruments also have modules to test colour, trash neps and fluorescence values. Some of the suppliers are providing bale management systems.

In case of manmade fibres linked instruments are available which can measure denier, tenacity, elongation and crimp properties. Robotic arm can take the fibre samples automatically from the creel.

In the area of yarn quality, modern evenness tester can measure, evenness, imperfection and periodical faults at a high speed. Some of the instruments are equipped with to measure hairiness, diameter variation, shape, dust as well as trash contents. Single thread strength testing machine are developed with a testing speed of 400 mt/min. The machine is equipped to carry out 30000 tests per hour. It is claimed that weaving performance of the yarn can be predicted well in advance with this machine. Some of the single thread strength machines are quipped with automatic yarn count determination system.

Yarn fault classification system has moved to the winding machine from the laboratory. Data of complete yarn lot can be taken from the winding machines. Electronic inspection Board can do the yarn grading based on yarn appearance by using CCD camera and software to measure yarn profile. Instrument can also give fabric simulations if desired.

In fabric testing, automatic fabric inspection system can inspect grey and single cotton dyed fabrics for all materials including air bag fabrics and glass fibre fabrics. Report and images of al the defects can be retrieved. In the area of process control and management ERP systems are available which provide 3-tier solution including the online data acquisition, offline data entry cum reporting system and intelligent business management system.

Status of Indian industry

At present Indian industry is highly disintegrated. There are approx. 2300 players in the organised spinning sector, 280 composite mills. 1000 weaving units and around 1,45,000 independent processing units and innumerable garment manufacturers. The status of machinery technology is not upto the mark except in spinning sector. About 100000 modern shuttleless looms are required to be installed by 2010 to meet the target. Processing sector will also need large dose of modernisation/upgradation. It is estimated that a total investment of 35 billion dollar might be required to achieve the growth planned by ICMF.

(The author is MD, Ginni Filaments)