Examination of the movement of a woven fabric in the horizontal direction using a non-contact end-effector

Abstract

The handling process of a single ply of cotton woven fabrics from a stack in the textile industry is done by workers. Cost-effective automatic handling of the fabrics is becoming an increasingly important issue to reduce the unit cost of the final product. In this study, transporting speeds in the horizontal direction of the woven fabrics were investigated using a non-contact end-effector. A Cartesian robot, which has an x and z axis, was used for handling the cotton woven fabrics. The movement process of a single woven fabric ply from a stack was experimentally shown to find out percentage of success rate of the system. Although the experiments were restricted with small square fabric plies of 100 mm x 100 mm sizes, this process could also be applied for products with different shapes.