End Of Overhead Cleaners

As per my memory goes, the only machine which I recalled from my first school trip to a textile mill as a kid was a Barber Coleman winder, with an overhead cleaner.

More then then the winder, the overhead cleaner was very amusing for me, because it moved on a track and had two arms and looked more like an octopus with two arms sucking fibers out of the machine.

As luck would have had it, I did my specialization in Polymer based Textiles, yet worked most of my life with machines and polymers. And the Octopus on the Coleman winder was always flashed into my mind, whenever I saw the overhead cleaner on the machines.

Well, the lazy thinking Textile Industry , it would take time to understand that a Robot, which can clean the floor can do the same job for the machine. It can also vacuum the fibres out of the machine , including floor cleaning . Job, which is currently being done by the OHTC.

At Mantex Technologies , now I am working out with a Robot Vacuum Cleaner to make a Vacuum cleaner, which vacuums in X axis and also in Y axis. Which means, the neck of cleaner will extend right till the area of operation, where the vacuum needs to be done.

The best thing about the Robot Cleaner is that it simply does not keep running till it has already " All Cleared" the dust and fibre from the area of operation. So, it is miles ahead of the old system of travelling OHTC.

The Robot is intelligent, so it also keeps taking pictures in real time and if you do wish to monitor, it can flash the pictures to a receiver.

The Second generation of robot will also calculate, the fly generation of the machine per day or per hour by using a small pizo sensor and alarm the winder or spinner on the short fibres or dust in the system. It will then report this via wireless to your hand phone.

The line of operation of the robot is very easy to make. A simple color sensor will follow the color line drawn besides the machine.  The robot will not leave this line and at the end of the machine, will turn back with the inbuilt systems of sensing obstacles etc. Robot will also stop on its own, when it senses that the line of operation is blocked by the operator.

No more Over Head Cleaners. It will now be Robot Cleaners . I only hope my design is not quickly copied away by some jerk.

Wait for the New Robot Cleaner against the Over Head Cleaner.

Low power, no messy wires, no overhead railings etc etc. Nice and clean machines. And interestingly lower priced then the OHTC.

Education, Endorsements and Accredit-ions.: Missed Opportunity.

Mantex Certified Yarn Dyer.

What I like about the IT Industry most is the limitless thinking. There are no borders, no frames, no boundaries. Everything is limited by space of your imagination. It is like Sunlight, which keeps spreading endlessly.

No wonder, IT professionals make millions of dollars and Textile professionals move in circles.

As technology changes so rampantly, there is a constant need to upgrade your skills to catch up with the changes. This need is generally not addressed correctly by the provider. Most of the skill set is left out to the user to exploit the resource and generally the user under values the product on account of low input knowledge. How many of us actually know all the features of our Hand Phones, though while buying, we ensured that we got wrapped up the best features into our purchase. And how many of us have actually gone ahead and used most of the features , if not all.

The most difficult part is : How to make People Read a Book ? In my own life time travelling across the world, I had seen very few and far between professionals, who would read technical books or technical journals or write an article. It is a known fact that during their own time at University, most bunked classes and with  great difficulty opened the books during exams and barely managed to pass.

Therefore, Industry practices then become the way of life for each professional and no one ever challenges the Industry practices. This is also one reason , why Textile has seen very poor Innovations in the last 200 years.

What I like about IT Industry is that there is a continuous learning process throughout the lifetime of the professional.  Because every single day some thing new comes up and every one has to explore the new applications and coding and navigation. If you are not learning, you are on the exit route .

This continuous learning has to come into the culture of all professionals and only then the real value of that Industry will show up. However, unfortunately, this continuous learning cannot be left over to the professional. Because in case of an IT professional, it is still possible to self educate as there are hundreds of programs out there. But for a Textile professional, unless this learning environment is created, the motivation for self learning is very low.

Second, the IT Industry was very smart. Look at the accredit- ions : Microsoft certified , Oracle Certified, Cisco Certified  etc etc. Where as in Textiles, not even one single machine maker saw the opportunity of opening up Continuous Education and Accredit -ions as an opportunity of providing value added services to the Industry.

All it would take is a third party developer to make a short term program and one could as well have it online. For all you know , there are around 1 Million professionals vying to take up the Title of
" Thies Certified Yarn Dyers " or  " Rieter Certified Spinner "  etc etc.

And look at the revenue stream out of it . 100 Euro per person for 100K enrollments per year from around the world is equal to  Euro 1.000,000 ( Euro 1 Million worth of biz with expenditure not more then Euro 200,000) plus the advantage of Brand Visibility and a Brand Loyalty. I am still not writing anything on the Endorsements, where the machine makers could have made another multi million revenue. Say Reiter Endorsed spindles or Trutzheler endorsed carding wire etc etc


The Business Schools are smart, they sell one or the other leadership program ( Though not one professor has ever become leader in his life ) or other management programs and make millions out of this opportunity.


However, as I have written umpteen times, the Textile Industry is a Lazy Thinkers Industry.My friends in Thies make fun of me stating that Atul is the only Super Genius, Super Engineer, Super Marketing God, though, Thies loses orders to the ratio of 5:1 to other machine makers. Atleast for making fun, one has to be a winner or have a success story. 
 I also make fun of them telling that soon their name will change from Thies to Thong and sales guys will have to reincarnate from Ralf to Xing Ming!  Let them keep a plastic surgeon in sight for the mandatory eye ball changes required.

Timeless Lesson In Marketing of Asian Machines!

Client: “Our next requirement, this is something big, you know, we need an elephant.” Machine Maker : "But why don’t you adjust with a buffalo, even it is big… and black?” C: "No, we need only elephant, let me explain our current process"… client explains for an hour. Machine Maker : "Fine, I understand ur requirement. But our system supports only buffalo." C:.."We need only elephant!" Machine Maker : "Ok... Let me see if i can customize.” Requirement taken : Client wants a big black four legged animal, long tail, less hair. Having trunk is mandatory. The same was documented, signed off and sent to Factory for development! At Factory Development Centre: Design/Development – Base on requirement all features are supported in base product (as buffalo), for trunk alone a separate customization is done. Finally the customization is shown to client. Client looks... And Faints Sales Manager Delivering The Product.   Interestingly, with European Machines, you order for a "Buffalo" and you get a delivery of an Elephant and that too White . Power Guzzler with prices such that the whole Euro debt has to be paid off from one sale of the machine to you.

Yarn Dyeing : Kiss RF Dryers Good Bye!

Technology has taken a new turn now. High Pressure Drying takes over from RF or steam drying.
All it takes a blast of Hot high pressure to remove moisture from the package and one gets nice and dried packages . This is the same old Pressure  Dryer , which has now become viable as RF dryers and hydro prices have soared. Only that now customers are viewing Pressure Dryer as a more friendlier system of drying .

This would mean, end of Centrifugal Hydro extractors and End of RF Dryers. No more pulling out packages from the yarn dyeing machine and loading on centrifuge and extracting 50 or more percent of water and then drying with Radio Frequency.

The energy cost of drying with high pressure dryers may be much lower then the combined energy used in Hydro and RF. Though , I am still searching, how much energy actually goes into it .However, the deliverable' s with pressure drying are much much better viz

Very Low Investment compared to Hydro And RF Dryer.
Atleast 15 to 20 workers reduced. ( For 10 TPD Plant )
Lower Energy consumption
No handling of packages any more
No damage of package in Hydro
No shape distortion in Hydro
No yellowness in RF Dryer
Lower Throughput Time
Efficient system
Heat Recovery
Space Saving


These are already too many deliverable' s of this  technology.

Currently, the machine makers are charging a huge sum for this equipment. However, if you are a smart engineer , you can design this system by yourself at 25% of the offer cost from machine makers. As usual, the current machine design as offered by the dyeing machine maker has bugs.  The dryer does not need a SS vessel. Air circulation does not need SS tanks. No compressor of any size has its air tank made out of SS. The water and the heat from the dried packages can rust the wall of the dryer and hence the inner wall can at best have an SS sheet lining or use some composites which are water and heat resistant.

Since, it is a simple technology, sooner or later, most people will understand and this will mark the end of Hydro and RF dryers.

This also means the return to the Mantex Dyesprings as Dyeing Center. Since the biggest hassle with metal springs was always the burn out rate in hydro extractors. Now that issues is resolved forever.

Those who will still not use compressed metal spring  package centers will only keep their cost of dyeing 25 to 40% higher on account of poor education and poor technical skills. Somehow the Winding machine makers do not know, how to manage a  mantex dyespring to run at high speeds and are misleading the yarn dyers to avoid metal springs for dyeing.

One has to be a big fool to ignore that each dye lot made on precision winders with plastic dyetubes results into a capacity under utilization of 25 to 40%.  It is like an airline, which takes 40% empty seats, because some supplier goes and tells him that quality of flight will be much nicer ,if he keeps the load lower.

 In fact, if only precision winding makers had sense, they would have found that with precision winding on dyesprings, the payload into dyeing machine improves both horizontally and vertically. Horizontally as now within the same diameter, they would pack more yarn and vertically, because packages will be compressed 25 to 40% . Overall payload will go up by 40% in case of cotton yarns and 60% in case of Texturized Yarns.  This would automatically justify higher investment against drum winders, which are generic competitor to Precision winders. But like I have written before, much of the machine makers themselves do not know about Textiles and the Industry ofcoarse refuses to use common sense . If Dyesprings dyed well for 50 years and that too with random winders, then surely it will have a far higher quality advantage with precision winders and will still give the higher thruput value to the dyer.

Companies Like Arvind Mills, Ashima , Mafatlal, Garuda Cotex , Abhishek, Welspun, Winsome, Anlima Yarns, ( B.Desh)  and hundred others for decades used Dyesprings on Precision Winders. And these are Global scale companies with very high quality and very strong work culture. But there are still some dyers, who get trapped into the plastic dyetubes for precision winders.

In any manufacturing set up, the throughput decides the final cost of manufacturing and any technology, which inhibits the thruput can never make profit sense . Do you own maths and see, that any plastic dyetube user loses more then USD1 million per year on account of under utilizing the capacity of dyeing machine. Only because some joker , somewhere in the world went and taught the dyer that plastic dyetubes give better results and the dyer as a flock of sheep followed him , without actually doing his own maths and quality evaluation.

We are not set of technologist or engineers, who have been taught to question and probe and research and then take intelligent decisions. We only take infantile pleasure in doing something, which others are also doing and believe that we are smart . Not realizing that it is this inefficiency which has bought today the Industry in Europe and US to a stage of non competitiveness against Asia and not the labor cost alone. And it is this inefficiency which is the biggest weakness of the big companies, that is being exploited by the small dyers, who manage to keep their cost lower and making the big companies run for their money.  I met a small dyer in Panipat this April and he said, it was because of the metal dyesprings, he could dye in a 200 kgs machine a lot of 300 kgs random wound packages, where as others were dyeing around 200 kgs with precision wound plastic dyetubes. The money flow had made him so rich that from a 2 ton dyer, he was now going into a 10 ton yarn dyeing plant.

Anyway, time to Kiss RF Dryers and Plastic Bobbins Good Bye Forever.

Spider Web - Online Mill Management!

 Spiderweb   uses the software of OLAP and Data Mining. Many IT companies provide this software and it was relatively easy to plug in this system to any kind of machines and equipments in a mill. Rieter has come out with this solution and has called it Spiderweb. I don't know, if Spiderweb is generic for the software or it is the Brand of Rieter.

Secondly, with wireless IP being available so cheaply, the data can be monitored remotely even sitting in head offices several cities or countries away.

Interestingly, it also alarms the users, if the quality parameters deviates and this keeps the quality on auto check mode.

More important is the use of the raw data into meaningful interpretation of

Power Guzzlers equipment's and the changes done to cut the energy usage .
 Machine breakdowns and historical cost associated with it.
Quality linked to fiber input quality, machine variables, changes in accessories or any subjective control which needs to be monitored online in real time.
Efficiency monitoring in real time .

One could go a step forward and make changes online from a remote location to change speeds or parameters of the machine.

Now with only Robots missing from the scene, the whole mill can be  remote controlled from any location and run fully with artifical intelligence. Though can handling robots are now available in the market and hence soon we will already have cans being handled by robots. Rest is all about threading in on various machines. I reckon a gang of 15 to 20 workers will be already enough to run a spinning plant of 25K spindles.

The system is very simple and any mill can design it by themselves, if they have a good IT department. A sensor linked to the top rollers of all the machines gives the productivity and a sensor linked to the quality gadgets monitors the quality in real time. This data is then used by the OLAP software ( Online Data Processing )

Those vending ERP solutions for Textiles should make use of this opportunity and capture this very large market.

The system can work on any equipment , whether it is knitting or dyeing or spinning or weaving.

Further, Image processing data will soon take over the quality screening in real time .

Yarn Package Size - 8 Inches Must And Legislated

Have you ever seen a container or truck being loaded with Yarn?

The packaging of yarn is either in cartons, or in bales or in Pallets. And the way , the cartons or bales or pallets are designed , not for the optimum shipment cost, but for optimum handling and storage . This causes a huge burden of extra freight charges which the buyer pays on account of usual lazy thinking of the Industry.

There is never an attempt to find out, the best size of the carton, which will fit the container or truck and  usually the truck carries thin air on account of lower loading from the design of cartons.

Anyway, assuming that the cartons do fill up the load of the truck. There is still the big correction, which the Industry needs to make on the size of the cone.

The 6 inches take up cones were suitable for the Industry in the 18th century and the whole trade was limited to small volumes and small cones and the weight of the cones was around few ounces. Since then the Industry has scaled up, but the cone size still stands in time. Though, now the cones are of 1.89 kgs . However, what is sacrosanct of 1.89 kgs.  There are some who would go in to take 2.5 ks on 6 inches traverse.

It is about time that the Industry switches to 8 inches traverse and takes delivery of yarn in larger packages of 3 kgs +. The large packages bring

Efficiency to the spinners
Efficiency to the weavers
A wobbling 60% higher loading per container
Hence higher sales value per container
Higher Cash Flow by 60% per container.

Imagine, a buyer who takes 100 containers per month in Americas from Asia, now will only need 50 containers for the same volume of supplies.

The annual savings of customers, who import large volumes can be as much as 50% total cost of freight.

Eg Freight from Asia to South America : USD 4000 Per container average.
If importer imports 200 containers per month : Cost : 200 x $4000 = $ 800,000
Savings with just importing 8 inches packages : 60% : $ 480,000
Saving per year                                                             : $ 6 Million 


Does any mill have scope to profit $6 million otherwise.


And what does it need to bring about this change : Simple addition of 8 inches rewinders for existing spinning mills and for new mills to order only Auto Coners with 8 inches drum. A time, will come, when all of it moves to jumbo cones of10 inches. However, let it first take this small step forward.

It is about time, Schlafhorst and Murata look at 8 inches auto coner seriously. The time of 6 inches traverse is gone.

The filament Industry works only on 8 inches and 10 inches and there is no reason, why spun industry cannot take a clue from other substrates.

The lazy thinkers in the Industry will still find many excuses to remain in their comfort zone. Innovators will win.

Does Spun Yarn Need Assembling/ Doubling ? No

Why is that  2 to 3 yarns of single end are assembled and then doubled before taking into the Twisting Machine ?

Say, 40s yarn of 2 ends are assembled and then made 40s/2 and made 20s count and twisted with desired twist.  Why not simply spin 20s count and give the desired twist. Much higher productivity on 20s and say the same result in twisting as 40s/2.

Assuming, there was comparatively lower strength or lower uniformity. But then for double yarns, these are still acceptable limits.

In the Filament Industry, yarns are directly twisted say 150 denier is directly twisted to 200 TPM or 300 or 600 TPM as the case may be . Only in certain cases, where plied yarns are required for special applications, the plied yarns are used like in Nylon Sewing Threads.

Generally speaking, atleast for coarse yarns, there is no need of assembling and then twisting. These can be directly spun and directly twisted. Much lower cost of manufacturing and almost the same results.

Will we stand up and start questioning our systems and methods laid out in the 18th century.

Can Management

Card Cans or Drawing Cans have to be typically identified with either colors or a colored thread wound around it for count identification.

As the Technology moved forward, none of the can makers worked on putting up a small LCD display showing the count of the sliver packed into it.

LCD display cost less then a Dollar , however, makes the can a more smarter entity in the spinning block. The LCD could have a numeral entry under it and it could either be remote entered with the count or press entered.

A further generation of can will any case have a motorized system, which will drive it to the lazing bay automatically on getting packed . It will also show the Number of meters of sliver or kgs of sliver packed into it , so at any given time the work in process is fully controlled.

All it needs is a Infra Red control points which will guide it to the destination from the control room.

Spinning will be control room managed, where the production chief manages most inputs on a screen and gets a visual display in real time of all the machines and quality graphs . The maintenance chief gets the error reports of machines and power consumption in real time.

Future of Spinning needs to be redefined. However, unless the industry pushes the machine makers to factor these demands, it will never happen in short time.

Composite Spindles

Last week, I was travelling and within my many international flights,  I was thinking if the Engine of the aircraft now had carbon reinforced blades and the seats were now changed from Aluminum to Carbon reinforced composites and so was the body. The whole thing  made the plane more lighter and increased the fuel efficiency by 25%. How is that the Spindle in the Ring Frame was not a potential target of carbon reinforcement.

Studies show that 40% of the total power in a Ring Frame comes from the weight of the spindle. If spindle weight can be reduced from 1 kg to 600 gms ,the power consumption will drop to half.

All it takes is a carbon composite of Spindle with the Aluminum and you have a power saver spindle. Same applies for Drums in a winding machine. Both are power guzzlers.

The composite industry is also not mature enough to target large volume products. It is working on high value applications like wind mill blades, air craft application, formula 1 car body applications etc. However, all those areas, where there is large volume, the composite industry is missing out. All of them take pride in putting up pictures of Airbus, Formula Cars , Wind Mill Blades and get infantile pleasure. All these applications have very low volumes and make little business sense. The real meat in composites is in rotary applications, whether spindles of Textile or Drilling Equipments or Drums etc etc.

The generic product manufacturers have very little capability of making composites. Textile Machine makers have always been oblivious to factoring new technologies, till the whole world already was into it.

I recently wrote to a carbon fibre maker in US to help me develop a carbon fibre composite for textile application and after the first email, he never got back to me. The suppliers also have very limited knowledge on the application areas.

Nevertheless, it is the future of rotary equipment's and fuel saving.

Legacy of Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs left us today, but perhaps will go into the history books as another college drop out, who created a Legendary Global Brand in computers and consumer electronics.

Only in my very last blog " Carding machines...." I had written about when the Textile Industry will start thinking like iPad and iPhones and now I have to come back and salute this extraordinary person who changed the whole world of computers . If only Textile Industry had the visionaries as that of the " Apple", we would have been into another world by now.

Last week, I was at ITMA and the owner of a large Textile machine maker commented that I was now a owner of a company and I should wear a proper business suit, as I was dressed in a T shirt and Trousers. I told him, has he seen " Steve Jobs" ever in his life time wearing a Suit , even when he was launching his products globally. Or had he seen Bill Gates wearing a suit or lately Obama in suit. He agreed and confirmed that perhaps, he was not concurrent.

The fact is that the whole Textile Industry is non concurrent. Because we still believe that the 18th century suits are suitable for 21st century. Conventionally yes, but if you are " Apple" then you are miles ahead of your time.

The " i " in Apple meant two things, first, it was " me " and second it was " Eye" . "Me the visionary". It outclassed itself in the computer world to consumer electronics and the music industry.

The fact remains that in Textiles, there are umpteen such opportunities which are available, but we don't have an " i " here.

I was telling " Muller " at the show that their Ribbon Dyeing machine was an excellent example of a yarn dyeing machine. Wherein the yarn got dyed, dried and wound in one single operation and with speeds of 20 meters per minute and several hundred yarns being wound at one time. The productivity was good enough. It needs no boilers, water which is one third of the conventional vessel and much lower power and a dryer, which is not a power guzzler. A wonderful integrated yarn dyeing machine.
" Muller" told me that yes, they did work on yarn dyeing machine , but did not succeed in marketing.

This is where " Apple " was legendary . iPad is simply an extension of laptop with touch screen. " Muller " still does not have an " Apple " in it to see that opportunity.

Whatever be the case " Steve Jobs" needs to be saluted for the way he outclassed the competition. The design and deliverable s of each of its product lines was unique , though the applications were as regular as other available products.

I only hope that there are visionaries in the Textile area, who get motivated out of " Steve " and bring something extraordinary to the market.