Pai Lung has developed a new monitoring system for its circular knitting technology, which allows users to identify defects in fabric production.
The company has filed a patent for a system for that instantaneously displays the status of a knitting machine based on a cloth surface status of a fabric, comprising a needle cylinder, a camera module capable of photographing the fabric during doffing, an information processing unit, and an encoder.
Pai Lung notes that the knitting quality of a circular knitting machine depends on whether there are defects in the fabric surface status, and the occurrence of defects is closely related to the stitch status of a plurality of knitting needles on the circular knitting machine.
When the lower edge of the stitch of one of the knitting needles wears too much, the push-up height of one of the knitting needles will be incapable of reaching the expected height, resulting in the following situations: the tongue cannot be fully opened; the old yarn ring has not been cleared (knitting needle knits with double yarns erroneously), the crochet hook cannot hook the new yarn (holes appear in the fabric).
On the other hand, when the upper edge of the stitch of one of the knitting needles wears too much, it will cause the following situations: the old yarn ring cannot be reliably released (in addition to the holes in the fabric, abnormal line textures can be found visually on the fabric after knitting); the knitted yarn loop is smaller than the yarn loop knitted in the previous period (abnormal line textures can be found visually on the fabric).
When in operation, the camera module photographs the fabric during doffing and generates a range of image data, wherein a camera lens of the camera module is not rotated with the needle cylinder, and is controlled by a plurality of photographing signals to photograph the fabric during doffing.
The information processing unit receives the image data and compares each image with another image a is located on a same vertical line of the fabric and photographed in at least one previous revolution of the needle cylinder. The knitting machine status is then prompted when a difference occurs.
The encoder generates a range of pulse signals when the needle cylinder is rotating, and the encoder outputs the plurality of pulse signals to one of the camera module and the information processing unit to count the plurality of pulse signals and to generate the photographing signals, wherein a count value used by the one of the camera module and the information processing unit is a factor of a total amount of the plurality of pulse signals during the needle cylinder rotating one revolution.
