USTER, Switzerland — November 2015 — Uster Technologies AG reports that for spinners, it’s the dream scenario: better quality yarn for their customers, produced at lower cost. The continuing demand for top quality, all along the textile chain, puts enormous pressure on spinning mills today. They have the challenge of meeting precise yarn specifications – while also reducing their operating costs to protect business profitability. The new USTER® JOSSI VISION SHIELD 2 can deliver the dream, with its advanced technology for ‘clean’ cotton with minimum loss of valuable good fiber.
Contamination-free yarn is a key quality objective, but effective cleaning of cotton fiber has often meant wasting too much good cotton at the same time. Among the various solutions considered for this problem, the detection and removal of contamination in the blowroom appears to be the ideal approach. The challenge is to detect every contaminant – even down to the size of a single hair – and then eject only the unwanted material, leaving the pure cotton fiber untouched.
With USTER® JOSSI VISION SHIELD 2, fiber cleaning and yarn quality assurance has taken a major leap forward in terms of both detecting power and efficiency. It is the result of joint development work after the acquisition of Jossi Systems AG by Uster Technologies AG in 2013. Since then, the advanced sensor know-how and software expertise of USTER has been allied to Jossi’s detailed experience in fiber cleaning, to create a value-adding innovation.
Sensors see it all
The unrivaled detection capabilities of the USTER® JOSSI VISION SHIELD 2 come from new sensors and the Powerful Imaging Recognition Technology (PIRT). This is a sophisticated image analysis technique perfected by USTER. The smallest particle of contaminant will be picked out, helped by sophisticated image recognition. The greater sensitivity of the system has already proven its effectiveness in trials, recording significantly improved detection of polypropylene, a common contaminant in raw cotton.
The effectiveness of the USTER® JOSSI VISION SHIELD 2 is further enhanced by its positioning in the blowroom line, directly after the fine opener. Thanks to its compact dimensions – requiring less than one meter of width – it fits perfectly where other fiber cleaning models can’t, regardless of the blowroom equipment brand. This location is a major advantage: the cotton tufts are in their most open state, right after the fine opener, so contaminants cannot escape detection by the PIRT sensors.
Better quality, less waste
Achieving better quality in yarns usually means higher costs – but not with the USTER® JOSSI VISION SHIELD 2. The new Efficiency Booster feature manages fiber cleaning to deliver better quality, with lower waste. Sivakumar Narayanan, Head of Marketing for Uster Technologies says: “We know that spinners want to be on the safe side when it comes to contamination control. At the same time, they don’t want to waste good cotton when applying tight fiber cleaning settings. The new USTER® JOSSI VISION SHIELD 2 exactly solves this problem.”
In fiber cleaning, different tuft densities can lead to false ejections and wasted cotton. The new Efficiency Booster counters this by providing an accurate view of the whole tuft, so that denser tufts are ejected only when they contain real contamination. The system creates a ‘fingerprint’ of a clean cotton tuft, as the basis for matching and retaining ‘good’ tufts.
Spinners at every market level can gain major benefits through the Efficiency Booster. In the highest quality segment, fiber cleaning settings could be set to even tighter tolerances, without increasing waste. For less critical applications, spinners could retain existing quality settings and see waste greatly reduced, with fewer ejections. In all cases, mills can expect significant improvements in the balance between quality and efficiency.
Efficiency savings: the figures
The USTER® JOSSI VISION SHIELD 2 has an improved speed measurement feature, which provides a further notable reduction in waste. By continuously measuring the velocity of the passing cotton tufts, the system can adapt the duration of each ejection, so that a minimum of material is removed with the contaminant. Mill trials have proved that optimizing ejection times in this way results in significantly less waste per ejection – an enormous long-term economic benefit.
Trials have demonstrated that raw material savings of more than 25,000 kilograms per production line per year can be achieved with the USTER® system including the Efficiency Booster. Spinning mills in Turkey, Pakistan and China have reported significant overall savings in production costs, with the Efficiency Booster, with a consequent benefit in shortened investment payback time.
Long-term advantages of contamination control
The USTER® JOSSI VISION SHIELD 2 provides a much higher removal rate for all types of contamination than any previous system, with the technology to minimize waste at the same time. For spinners, this delivers immediate advantages of higher yarn quality and reduced production cost. Longer-term benefits of enhanced quality reputation and improved profit margins confirm the USTER® JOSSI VISION SHIELD 2 as an excellent investment for the whole spinning business.
Posted January 18,2016
Source: Uster Technologies AG
