Lace cutting for the next millennium

摘要

The problems of pattern cutting as applied to flexible elastic mesh fabrics (lace) are described withinthe context of the total manufacturing process. While the design and knitting stages of lacemanufacture are highly computerised, providing associated benefits, the cutting room operates withconventional, slow; labour intensive machinery leading to substantial processing bottlenecks anddependent costs. A new system is presented which uses machine vision to determine the requiredcutting path on the lace fabric in real-time via sophisticated, yet high speed, image processingalgorithms. The determined cutting path data are used to direct a high speed CO{sub}2 laser beam tothe correct cutting point with beam velocities of typically 6 m/sec. Simultaneous dual edge cutting isnow possible using this new system, leading to lace throughput being increased by a factor oftentypically with the possibility of processing more sophisticated designs and achieving higher cut edgequality.