I am a Senior Designer for Warren Corporation, an affiliate of Loro Piana – Italy. We are a high-end, luxury fiber, men’s wear worsted suiting fabric manufacturer with design and sales offices in New York City and mill in Stafford Springs, CT. For what seemed liked years and years, we researched the CAD/CAM industry for a system that would address not only the design side of fabric manufacturing, but also the production side. Warren needed a system that worked the way we had manually, by a method that is utilized by many fabric manufacturers – creating woven blankets.
Let me explain what a woven blanket is. A blanket is a full width warp of 59 inches and usually 48 meters long that is divided into many small warp sections. A typical blanket may have 5 different patterns with 3 or 4 different color ways per pattern. Fillings are woven across the warp, which correspond with each pattern in the blanket. Usually a pattern will have around 10 fillings to color all the color ways of a particular warp pattern. When a blanket has been woven and finished, the selection process is made by culling out the unwanted crossings. The successful crossings are then numbered and identified with a sticker and sent to the New York office to be arranged on presentation boards for our customers to review, select and have made into full width samples at our mill.
Warren required a CAD/CAM system that could make the blanket program work as we had done manually for so many years, but now be streamlined by the implementation of a computer program. Fabric simulation was a minor feature. We needed a CAD/CAM system that would replace the manual and oftentimes inefficient blanket designing and production procedures. What we needed was a "WORKHORSE"!!
Our choice of the CAD/CAM system created by IN s.r.l. of Bulciago, Italy has made the blanket season become a smoother running, more efficient part of our operation. By working closely with one of the software designers at IN s.r.l., together we created a system that functioned in a logical, easily understood and practical way. Each facet of the programs were approached in a method that closely represented the way we had been working manually for so many years but also with some improvements. Of course this partnership is no where near being finished. We have plans to create more programs that can only help to make our jobs at Warren Corporation more efficient and productive.
Our first season utilizing the CAD/CAM system consisted of 85 blankets and Warren Corporation has viewed this as being a great success. In order to achieve this success, we first had to input all of our colors, create visual yarn structures and connect them to our yarn ranges in the CAD system. This monumental task took 4 _ months to complete! With the completion of this portion, we then took the plunge to enter our blankets.
The design team in New York first had to create the blankets by selecting swatches, assigning them to particular style ranges and choosing colors to create the many color ways desired. The color information was entered in to the CAD and then sent to the mill design office via Internet e-mail. At the same time the physical blanket swatches were sent to the mill for analysis. Once the designers at the mill had completed their technical analysis, that information was entered into the CAD, along with the colors that the New York Design office had input, e-mailed and then Imported into the blanket program in the CAD system at the mill. The completed blanket was then printed on a black and white laser printer and distributed to the departments involved in the making of the blankets. These departments included: Planning, Dressing, Drawing-in and Weaving.
At the present time, the Dressing and Weaving departments are able to extract information from the CAD system into the CAM system with those departments PC’s for their particular requirements. Plans for the near future include Drawing-in to also be able to extract information directly from the CAM for use on the computer controlled drawing-in machinery. Additional plans also include for a direct connection from the CAM system to each loom with their required chains and weft patterns.
One of the most important features we required in any CAD system we purchased, was the ability to center a warp pattern within the warp section in a blanket. We do this at Warren in order to create a more visually pleasing presentation of patterns for our customer’s viewing in the New York showrooms. Most systems we had researched addressed the centering function across a full warp width, but not in a blanket’s many small sized warp sections. This critical requirement was given to the software designers at IN s.r.l. and they created a program that allowed the designer to select a centering point, plus an alternate centering point with a clear visual representation on the monitor. This program not only centered the warp pattern, but also provided the designer the option to move the draw and denting along with the pattern as it was centered. Once completed, the program recorded the new pattern, draw and/or denting. This function has cut the time it takes to manually figure centering by more than half. (Personally, this is my favorite feature of the CAD system!)
Another important feature we required was the CAD system’s capability to efficiently address the "tie-back" factor. Let me explain what a "tie-back" is. For example, we have a hounds tooth pattern with a windowpane. We would also like to have this ground without a windowpane. In order to accomplish this without having to dress another blanket, we include the yarns that will be needed to make the allover hounds tooth pattern. They are dressed at the same time with the original warp pattern with the red and gold decoration yarns, and are placed in the divider area between the warp sections. These yarns are run behind the warp to the waste in the loom as the blanket is being woven. When the fillings have been woven to make the windowpane hounds tooth design, we then have to "tie-back" the gold and red yarns being replaced, and tie in the yarns needed for the new overall ground pattern. The yarns that were replaced with the "tie-backs" will now go to the waste. This "tie-back" method allows us a greater yield of patterns within a single blanket. If you think this sounds difficult, achieving this in the CAD blanket program created a monumental challenge to the CAD/CAM designers.
By making the tie-backs a sub-warp to the main warp in the CAD blanket, we were able to isolate the particular yarns to be tied back and this made what we required from the Dressing department a clearly understandable request. It also made it clear for the weaver to see which warps were to be tied back and exactly how many "tie backs" there were per warp section. The other important feature that had been included when the "tie-back" program had been designed was the ability to simulate a warp before and after "tie-backs" had been made. This feature made it easier for the designer to check whether or not a "tie-back" had been made in the correct position in the warp pattern.
Another important request made to the CAD design team was one that addressed the issue of weave factor, or the actual tightness of looseness of a weave. We always need to be sure how a weave will behave in a particular style fabrication and this requirement was met with a bonus feature! Not only does the CAD system analyze a weave when drawn on a straight draw but also when there is a fancy draw involved. This feature can help the designer to determine whether or not a weave can be used in a particular fabrication. A weave may be unusable on a straight draw, but on a fancy draw it may be suitable. As you might imagine, these features have cut out the lengthy formulas we formally had to figure manually. This is not one of the many tasks involved in writing blankets that any of the designers have missed doing!
There is a library for chains (one of many files available in the library) and a second bonus came in the form of providing both the warp and the fill weave factors in the chain library. This second bonus has also become a way to farther sort chains by being able to request only the weave factors needed.
As the chain library is accessible by stipulating one of several attributes, the draw library is another that has been approached in a way that also applies common sense. Draws can be requested either by specific harness or by the complete draw list that is available up to the current date. Before the CAD system became an integral part of Warren’s design department, our only filing system for draws was a book that contained draws of all harness descriptions without a breakdown of those harnesses. In order to determine whether or not a particular draw had already been assigned a permanent number, we had to flip through every page of the library and hope we recognized a match before we might have repeated it. As you can imagine, this was a very inefficient and laborious way to find an existing draw.
This brings up another very important feature created to make the CAD’s blanket program even more efficient. When any new chain, draw or denting is created, the CAD system automatically checks the existing file information and alerts the designer if there is a match in the system. The CAD will even provide the name it has in the library if it has located such an equivalent. Thus, no more duplicates and no more laborious searching!
When all the information has been entered in the CAD blanket program by the designer it can then can be printed on the laser printer. The blanket print program is broken down by which pages will be used for the warps, the draws, the fills, etc… and this feature lets the designer select which pages they want to be printed. This breakdown is very useful in the event a change has been made to any part of the blanket after it has been completed.
For example, if a filling color on page 12 needs to be changed to another color, the correction can be made and then that particular page can be reprinted with the updated color. This has made for conservation of paper and time.
The blanket program has also improved efficiency because it does not allow for incorrect yarn numbers. This factor is further going to be improved by the implementation of bar coding in our design departments for our yarn colors. This will surely make for an almost foolproof way to enter our yarn colors in the blankets.
At the end of a printed blanket, a yarn usage calculation list is provided. This information goes on to the planning department for blanket yarn ordering purposes and also for future ordering of yarn for samples which will be for customer selections made from these blankets.
At the present time the CAD system does not interface with Warren’s mainframe computer. This means that each blanket must also be entered into the mainframe in order to generate reports required by departments such as Planning and Sample. This interfacing will be available soon and most certainly will be another important factor in having a CAD/CAM system at Warren Corporation. A blanket will be entered only once and it will be accessible to all of the Departments, from Design to Planning to Production via the network.
The next step in the evolution of a blanket is when it must be passed on to the various production departments involved in creating the physical blanket. These are the CAM (or, computer aided manufacturing) processes.
The first area to be impacted by a blanket is the Planning department. The yarn requirements provided by the CAD system are reviewed and then ordered. After the yarn storage department pulls the required yarns for the blanket warps and wefts, the Dressing department prepares to dress the blanket warps.
This is accomplished by extracting the information needed from the CAD system’s blanket program to the CAM’s Hergeth program. The Hergeth is a vertical warping machine that is capable of making the short warps needed for the production of blankets. The information from the CAD for the Hergeth program is simultaneously stored in the CAM database as a blanket is created.
The Dressing department assistant accesses the Hergeth warping machine program within the CAM’s directory and calls up the desired blanket. The program provides information such as body ends, selvedge ends, number of warp patterns and overall warp width. The assistant then assigns the number of turns for the Hergeth dresser that will be needed to produce the warp length requested. This new information is then either stored into the Hergeth directory memory or sent directly to the PC on board the warping machine for immediate use.
Original blanket specifications may sometimes require adjustments in order to be better suited for the occasional unforeseen production requirements. The Dressing assistant can either add or subtract ends per warp section to accommodate a particular draw. They also can change a warp pattern if only small lots of a color are available and a block of one color needs to be divided into two color lots.
Having the capability to make the necessary adjustments without always having to go back to the designers has greatly increased efficiency in the Dressing department. Of course if there is an issue regarding a pattern’s visual aspect, the Design department makes the needed changes in the CAD blanket program and then Dressing can access the changes once again through the CAM’s Hergeth program.
The next area to be addressed in the production of blanket warps is the Drawing-in department. At the present time the CAM program to interface with the computer driven drawing-in machine is not complete. This means the draws and denting are taken directly from the CAD blanket paper copy provided by the Design department.
When a special denting is required the blanket copy provides Drawing-in the complete information needed.
When the CAM program will be completed for Drawing-in, efficiency and accuracy are expected to dramatically improve.
The final area of production that extracts information form the CAM system is Weaving. At the present time weaves and filling patterns are transferred to the looms using the "Pocket Staubli" portable system. The "Pocket Staubli" has replaced the old style punch cards and the CAM program has gone one step further by replacing the manual introduction of weaves in to the "Pocket". Now with the CAD/CAM system, weaves and filling patterns that have been entered by the Design department into the CAD blanket program are available to be extracted by the Weave department. The CAM program provides the loom with the weave, the selvedge, the weft pattern and the assignment of yarns to the feeders on the loom. The option to make temporary changes to any of these areas is provided by the CAM system.
Plans for the near future include direct transfer of information to the looms without the need for the "Pocket Staubli". Both weaves and fill patterns will be transferred to the looms by the Weave department assistant while seated in his office. No longer will he need to go out to the loom to manually install this information to each loom.
Overall, there have been many advantages using the CAM programs. Data is entered only one time by the Design department and this database is shared with all of the departments involved in producing a blanket. No longer do we have illegible, confusing, handwritten blankets. All of the information is uniform and clear. Errors have been greatly reduced and blanket production has become markedly more efficient.
In conclusion, the acquisition of a well-rounded CAD/CAM blanket program for Warren Corporation has been a favorable and successful marriage of design and technology. By no means are we near the end of our partnership with the software designers of our system. Together we will continue to work to make improvements for an ever evolving, CAD/CAM blanket program. Simulations can be valuable, but a program that works with the everyday functions involved in the design and production of one of our most critical resources of new ideas, that is, blankets, has been one of the most important tools we could have ever acquired.
