A seminar on “Advanced Sensors and Controls Used in Textile Industry” was held at the Bangladesh University of Textiles on May 17, 2022. The seminar was hosted and organized by the Department of Textile Machinery Design and Maintenance. In the seminar, Mr. Volker Harmann Muller, the Sales and Service Director of PLEVA gave an informative presentation on the application of the latest sensor technologies to textile types of machinery. PLEVA is a multinational well-known machine manufacturing company. In this seminar, guests present were: Mr. Afzal Hossain (Managing Director, Confidence Kima Limited); Dr. Shaikh Md. Mominul Alam (Dean, Faculty of Science and Engineering, BUTEX); Tanjheel Hasan Mahdi (Asst. Professor, TMDM, BUTEX); Anupom Mondol (Asst. Professor, TMDM, BUTEX); Ariful Haque Ashik (Asst. Professor, TMDM, BUTEX); Tarik Reza Toha (Lecturer, TMDM, BUTEX)
The session started with the presentation given by two talented students of the 44th Batch of Textile Machinery Design and Maintenance department Avishek Das Gupta and Faria Tasneem.They gave presentation on two research papers published by the department of TMDM. After that, the main segment of the seminar began. Mr. Volker Muller started his presentation with discussing the high tech weft straightening system of stenter machine. He discussed about the sensors that are used to control the skewing and bowing in the fabric. Correcting the weft straightness is really important because in textile processing after the stenter the fabric basically goes into the garment making process. So if the weft direction is not corrected in stenter then there is very little option of correcting this fault further. If the buyer find skew and bow fault in the finished garments then they might suggest two actions:
- Propose to buy the garment with lesser cost which can result in financial loss.
- Send the fabric for recorrecting. Processing the fabric again in the machine may icurr huge cost.
In stenter, the two bend rollers is called the bowing roller. It corrects the bowing fault in the fabric. There are also three parallel rollers which are called the skew rollers. The amount of bowing and skew allowable are settled in the control panel. The bowing rollers move up or down to control the bowing of the fabric and skew rollers move forward or backward to control the skewing. After processing, a sensor measures the bowing and skewing availble in the fabric and shows it on the control panel. If the skewing and bowing is not under the allowable limit, then the fabric is processed again. After the process, the fabric passes another sensor that indicates how much skewing and bowing still remains in the fabric.
Next, Mr. Muller discussed exhaust humidity, fabric, and air temperature measurement in the stenter machine. Heat setting of the fabric is done in a stenter machine to provide dimensional stability of the fabric. Humidity and temperature in the heat setting zone of the machine can greatly impact the finished fabric quality. Moisture and temperature sensors made by PLEVA are used in this section to measure and control exhaust humidity and temperature. Furthermore, He presented the measurement and control system of the center in the heat setting section.
After the stenter machine, Mr. Muller presented the dye pick-up measurement system by PLEVA in the Pad Dry Machine. In the pad dry machine, the fabric is first passed through a dye bath, where the fabric is immersed in the dye bath and two squeezing rollers control the pick up a percentage of dye liquor in the fabric. The dye pick-up percentage is predetermined. So to maintain the required pickup %, the pick-up of the fabric is measured just after the pad bath by sensors. If the required pickup % is achieved then the fabric is passed to the drying section. If not, squeezing pressure or immersion time is adjusted to get the required pick-up %.
Mr. Muller presented the moisture control system in the Dryer machine. The moisture is first measured by the sensor. According to the measurement, the fabric speed and the temperature inside the dryer is controlled.
Furthermore, the sensor application in the sizing machine was also discussed in the seminar. The sizing process is done on yarn to increase the yarn strength so that they do not break during the weaving process. In the sizing machine, sensors are used to measure the size pickup % of the yarn. Sensors are also used to measure the temperature and humidity inside the machine to ensure proper size pickup %.
Most importantly, prevention of excess water consumption was discussed in this seminar. A huge amount of water is used by every textile industry. It is the duty of every textile engineer to reduce the water, and energy consumption in the textile industry to make the textile sector most sustainable.
