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Uster Technologies offers early-warning system for spinning mills

Using a Chinese spinning mill case study, the company explains how its Uster Afis Pro 2 fibre testing instrument can help manufacturers avoid management breakdown.

10th June 2015

Innovation in Textiles
 |  Uster

Industrial, Clothing/​Footwear

Even when a spinning mill has adopted exemplary quality management structures, there may be a danger that the system may fail to reach its potential if those structures are not exploited fully. This may result in breakdown in management control, and a waste of the time and money invested in the quality systems.

Uster Technologies, a leading high-technology instrument manufacturer, presents its Uster Afis Pro 2 fibre testing instrument, designed to act as an early warning of individual quality defects and an indicator that the overall quality structures are not working.

Monitoring actions

Quality-conscious spinners are generally well-versed in making use of valuable tools, such as Uster Tester 5, for laboratory controls and Uster Quantum 3 as the last-stage failsafe in the winding room, the company reports. Most mills will have put in place a series of instrumental checks, enabling unacceptable fault levels to be detected and rectified.

Uster Afis Pro 2 fibre testing instrument is designed to act as an early warning of individual quality defects. © Uster Technologies

Sometimes, though, these monitoring actions will actually highlight the need for cohesive structures throughout the mill, to establish systematic quality management – and ensure it is applied continuously as a priority strategy.

Case study

Zhang Qiang, Manager of an established spinning mill in Xingjiang province, recognized an unusual high quantity of bobbins being ejected at the winder. The Ne 34 cotton yarn contains too many yarn faults compared with the settings from the Uster Tester 5.

The data from the Uster Quantum 3 clearers shows irregularities for thick places in classes C3, C4, D3 and D4 and indicates a high level of unacceptable thick place cuts, indicating changes compared to the measured fiber characteristics. The whole Yarn Body also appears to be wider than normal.

Laboratory results from the Uster Tester 5 also show that the values of neps and thick places are outside of the ranges defined by the customer’s yarn profile. These results prove that the Uster Quantum 3 – the final step of the systematic quality management system –saved the spinner from a potentially very costly claim, by highlighting the problem, the manufacturer reports.

Identifying the real problem

However, the fact is that the problem should never have gone so far as the winding machine, according to Uster Technologies. From the Uster Tester 5 results, and based on his own knowledge and experience, Zhang Qiang assumed that the quality problem started at carding, or even earlier during the bale laydown.

Uster Afis Pro 2 fibre testing instrument acts as an indicator that the overall quality structures are not working. © Uster Technologies

This mill’s systematic quality management starts at carding, testing the sliver on a weekly basis.  “I know that the correlative results of the Afis will reveal that the problem could have been recognized already at this stage of the production process,” said Zhang Qiang. The files, indeed, showed the Uster Afis Pro 2 reports show a deviation of more than 7% for the short fibre values, confirming the origin of the problem.

Quality management

It is not easy to solve the problem of tight resources in a spinning mill. But setting the right priority on systematic quality management could help to get the most value from available resources, the company reports.

Based on the case study, it is also clear that spinning mills would be well-advised to take Afis test results as a pre-indicator or early-warning system, prompting action before the yarn clearer has to provide the final, more costly, solution.

“Our mill has well-structured processes for quality management implemented and could serve as a good example for many others,” said Zhang Qiang. “But the impact of a systematic quality management can only reach its full potential when it is put into practice as an absolute priority.”

www.uster.com

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