Five years ago, I published one write-up on Sewbo Inc. technology, an innovation on sewing garments by a robot. Where you have seen a robotic arm sewing a complete t-shirt. Here is another development in robotics and its applications in the apparel and textile manufacturing industry. It is robotextile and robotextile cell. It is a textile material gripping (different types of fabrics) technology.
This development may bring new possibilities in digitalization and industry 4.0. As per the company the robotextile cells are already in use. In today's post, I will share few interesting facts about the robotextile.
What is the Robotextile?
A textile robots designed to pick up the separated fabric layer and set it down again safely and smoothly at the desired position for following process like sewing, serging operations.
"With robotextile, a reliable separation of fabric layers with automation is achieved, which separates a wide variety of textiles and fibres reliably and economically. Layer by layer. Without a double handle. Precisely this separation and pick-up of textiles is one of the most important basic process operations in the further processing of all kinds of fabrics.
Gripping fabrics of almost any kind separately and depositing them “ready-to-work” for processing – that is the core motto of robotextile. Secondary processes are automated economically and efficiently. Workers will once again turn their attention to the value-adding textile production steps." - claimed by https://robotextile.com/
The core of the robotic cell is the textile gripper.
What is new in Robotextile
"When we started our business we focused on two issues: (1) multi layer fabric cutting table and (2) end-of-arm-tool for handling single top layer from fabric stack.
Meanwhile we also work directly from single layer cutting table, receiving the cutting layout from the table to the robot. We can do both.
Our strong USP is the separation of top fabric layer from stack, without taking second layer. We do not use regular vacuum, and no needle. That would not work in most cases.
On our website we explain our gripper technology principles. New patents are filed international.
At this point of time we started our company since May 2022 on the market, establishing sales and service organization in Europe first. Americas and Asia come second. But we are already in contact with very large textiles and apparel producers in Americas and Asia, making a strong direct connection with them.
The textile market is sending lots of applause to us. That is very encouraging and motivating to us. We collected already lots of projects, which we are already testing with real samples. We prefer the KUKA robot, but we can work with any robot brand. We also could sell the grippers without robot, that is possible."
Advantages (claimed by solution provider):
Reduce manual intervention in material handing and transportation. With this technology automatic sewing machines can be fed with the work.
- Automation in the textile industry!
- Productivity in manufacturing
- Controllable by factory personnel
- Adaptable technology for fabrics
- Low-grade tasks are automated!
About the co-founders of Robotxtile technology
The founders and managing directors Michael Fraede and Michael Müller use all their experience and care to fulfil their customers’ wishes.
