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The purpose of this paper is to understand the impact of the cutting forces on the quality of pieces in industrial cutting of multi-ply textile material. It also tries to establish a cutting model that can simulate the cutting forces in order to understand the behaviour of the blade.

Working on an industrial machine, a cutting head with an oscillating knife is instrumented with different sensors. Using this equipment, cutting forces can be analysed experimentally while the fabric is being cut along a straight line.

A model of the physical phenomena of the cutting forces is proposed, taking different parameters into account such as the geometry of the blade, the properties of the material being cut and the parameters of the cut. The simulated forces and the monitored forces are compared and parameters for minimising the cutting forces of fabrics are deduced.

Due to the wide diversity of fabrics, all with different mechanical characteristics, this research only began with the study of denim in a straight cut.

This paper describes an instrumentation of automatic cutting head for textile. It manages to simulate the action of the fabrics on the blade through effort monitoring and help in the understanding of the multi-ply cutting process.

Shows how providing robotic solutions for a variety of shoe making processes has enabled Brightwood, the Florida‐based manufacturer of athletics shoes, to compete with off‐shore production where manual labour does similar tasks. Looks at the French shoe manufacturing equipment company, Actis, which supplied Brightwood with Stäubli RX90 robots to perform cementing and roughing processes.

Complex material requirements for high‐technology applications increasingly demand the use of hybrid material structures with properties tailored to the lines of loading. Textile‐reinforced multilayer composite structures are particularly suitable for the production of component structures in an optimised lightweight construction. In the loading case, however, delaminating phenomena occur between the individual layers due to the low interlaminar shear strength. The appropriate techniques and machines of the ready‐made‐clothing technology allow the specific sewing‐up of the semifinished textile products into a three‐dimensionally reinforced multilayer composite structure; the setting of a load‐adapted and failure‐tolerant characteristic of properties being possible in the z‐direction through a versatile variation of sewing parameters. Moreover, the sewing technology makes possible a ready‐made‐clothing‐technological preassembly of components of semi‐finished products, and thus can perform position‐fixing functions in the consolidation of the composites. The ready‐made‐clothing process is divided into sub‐processes like product development, preparation of cutting, cutting, connecting and forming as well as packaging and shipping. The technical procedures and machines applied are chosen from economic aspects. Besides the large number of pieces, extreme thickness of the textile products of up to 20 mm and the required sewing precision demand precise and reproducible manufacturing processes.

IN the construction of their airscrews the Hispano Suiza Company use principally aluminium alloys—duralumin, alfcrium, avional—with a mean density of 2·8, and with mechanical properties equal to those of a half‐hard steel. They have been considering for some time the manufacture of blades of magnesium alloy, the mean density of which is 1·8, thereby offering considerable advantage over the aluminium alloys as regards weight, but, in this article, only aluminium alloy blades are dealt with.

Practically all salmon fillets produced in Norway are trimmed clean of unwanted fat, bone remnants and other defects according to customer requirements. In today’s modern salmon-processing plants, the trimming operation is performed by a combination of automated trimming machines and manual post-trimming. Manual post-trimming is necessary due to the inability of current trimming machines to obtain satisfactory trimming. The purpose of this paper is to describe the work done so far toward a robotic post-trimming of salmon fillets.

A prototype concept system was developed to explore the possibility of robotic post-trimming. The concept is based on 3D machine vision, a high-speed robot manipulator and a flexible light-weight cutting knife.

The developed prototype demonstrated the feasibility of detecting a pre-defined object to be trimmed in 3D, and performing the specified trimming cut along a 3D cutting trajectory.

The developed prototype system was built and integrated – focusing so far only on a single trimming operation: the tail cut.

The originality in the paper is the description of a prototype integrated system, focused on robotic post-trimming of salmon fillets. The value is in providing a starting point for further development toward a complete robotic post-trimming of salmon fillets.

BEFORE discussing the machines and methods used, it is necessary to understand the fundamental laws which govern the testing of materials.

This paper sets out to report on the developments in the evolution of advanced composite fibre structure production systems, to highlight advanced equipment already in production and to examine efforts to extend automated technology to assessing damage and automatically repairing composite fibre structures.

Leading companies in design and construction of advanced composite fibre production machinery are teaming with other technology leaders to further automate the inspection, damage assessment and repair of composite fibre structures. Automated control and movement of inspection scanners, coupled with computer analysis of findings, provide input to repair program generation. The repair program then can direct the ultrasonic cutting and composite fibre tape‐laying procedures necessary to complete the repair. Also important is the coordination of a material‐handling system to link the parts and the required production subsystems.

The outlook for totally automated repair looks very promising. Success appears to depend more on implementation and automation of known technologies and less on the development of totally new technology. Key are the software developments necessary to complete the system integration.

A team approach, where leaders in their own technology join together rather than an expert in one area attempting to become an expert in other technologies, looks like a more productive answer. A bonus is that the end result will be the combination of the best of all the applicable technologies.

Seeing the results of others in tackling what may seem like a hard to automate application by employing a team of vendors can provide a road‐map to success in addressing other requirements.

The influence of mechanical and physical properties of fabrics on cutting process and the behaviours of fabrics during automatic cutting of a fabrics lay into garment pieces is studied. It is shown that the blade forces and the mechanical and physical properties of fabrics, such as elongation strength, bending and shear rigidity have significant influences on cutting of fabrics lay. The velocity of vertical and horizontal components of movements of the knife blade, elastic properties of fibres and the air permeability have significant influence on the quality of cutting and pattern pieces, as well.