by [TC]²
A monthly column of technology rambling, rumination and reality
By: Jud Early, Corporate Vice President, Research, [TC]²
December 2005
Hello, faithful readers,
Christmas is only nine days away, and already Santa has left some new goodies. They were too big to fit under our tree, so we placed them in the demonstration center at [TC]².
As I mused about this column, I was struck by how much things have changed, and especially how change is good. Sharing with you how change has been good in relation to technology causes me to revert to a time long ago. It seems long ago, but really was only thirty years. I guess one sign of getting older is reminiscing about the old days, whether good or bad. The year was 1974 and I was employed at Haggar Apparel Company, now Haggar Clothing Co. All cutting for approximately fifteen million pairs of slacks was being done by hand. A decision was made to install a computerized cutter. The Hughes laser was being used by clothing manufacturers but was unsuitable for mass production. The new invention by Joe Gerber that used a reciprocating knife seemed to meet the need for high ply cutting. In those days cuts of ten thousand pair were not unusual, so stacking high, and cutting the max was the order of the day. The System 91 traveling conveyor machine had been installed at H.D. Lee Co and was the machine of choice.
The 91TC was more than thirty feet long, necessitating the removal of a structural column in the building. It sat on steel tracks that were two and one half inches thick and four inches wide. Installing the tracks took a couple of weeks, since they were bolted to the floor every few feet, and required to be in the same level plane within a fraction of an inch. Leveling four tracks that were about sixty feet long, required shimming at different points, with joints welded and ground smooth to join the separate rails into four long ribbons of steel.
The cutter conveyor table sat on a structural steel framework, and had walkways at each side, with guard rails to prevent falling off the platform. Steps led down to the floor. The structure had to be welded at assembly, and the deck plates fastened with bolts that required tapped holes, also drilled at assembly. The components were handled with fork lifts and after assembling the cutter and its deck mounted components, the overhead gantry system that carried power was installed.
With months of planning, exchange of numerous engineering drawings, and at least a couple of months of rail and cutter installation, the machine was ready to begin its shakedown and debug stage. I wish I had a photo of the 91TC to share with you. For those who have never seen one, it is hard to imagine in the context of today’s machines. I had the pleasure of moving it several years later, and it required cutting apart with a portable bandsaw, and removal of the side of the building to extricate it from its originally installed location. Setup at the new location required rewelding the cut frame, and another labor intensive installation.
Last week a new cutter was delivered to [TC]². It is a GTXL, made by Gerber. It arrived in a trailer, with three casters attached to its underside. Four men rolled it out of the trailer and into position on the demonstration floor. Crates containing the beam and cutter head were separate from the cutter’s conveyor table. No fork lifts were required, only a pallet jack to allow removal of the wheels and lowering to its operating height.
GTXL shown during installation – some covers not yet installed
Installation began with the technician attaching the parts that were in separate crates, and the electrician running the electrical power wiring to the machine. Running and hookup of the electrical power took longer than the installation of the beam, cutter head, computer and small parts. With less than one day of effort the machine was ready to cut. When it is time for this machine to be replaced by another, attaching the casters and rolling onto a trailer is all that will be required. Change is good.
You’ll probably be thankful that I don’t have another reminiscing story about the other item Santa brought. The demonstration center now has another printer. It came from the Netherlands via Japan and Italy. It is the Stork Sapphire II with blanket belt feed.
Sapphire II in demonstration center
I was particularly impressed with the easy installation and startup of this machine. Since I have no old-timer’s story to tell, I’ll use the analogy of installing an office printer twenty years ago and today. For those who worked in technology twenty years ago, installing a printer required finding the DOS driver, installing it and the control string of characters. Not a bad task, but far from today’s installations where Windows identifies the printer and installs the drivers, and runs a test page, relieving the user of almost all the work.
The Sapphire II was almost as easy. Since it was our first Stork machine, Stork sent a technician from The Netherlands and one from Connecticut to do the installation and training. The hardest part of the job was getting the machine out of its crate. A pile of wood sufficient to build a small home was left when the machine came out, and after that it was just a matter of placing it in position, installing the ink cartridges and checking head alignment. These are the same steps that are done when you install a printer at home or in the office. A Firewire interface cable connects the printer to the computer, and after the initial printing was done, a conversion to a bulk ink supply table completed the installation. Admittedly, having experienced technicians doing the work made it quick and easy. However, I believe that after starting up a couple of these machines, a reasonably capable person could install and calibrate this machine. The most impressive part was how well the color matched expectation right from the start.
The blanket feed belt has an adhesive that is tacky to touch, but is made more so by a heater that is positioned under the belt in the rear. Heating the belt provides additional grip to ensure exact feeding of the lightest weight fabrics. If fabrics are thin and/or open construction, ink can penetrate through the fabric and could contaminate the belt, causing a back strike-off to occur on new fabrics. To avoid this happening, the machine has a belt washer, engaged as needed to scrub the adhesive surface with clean water and rotary brush, drying the belt before it returns to the point where fabric enters.
As you can see in the photo, colors are brilliant. Subtle gradations are seamless, and resolution of the images are beyond expectation. This is made possible by a library of profiles that is resident when the machine is delivered, and are calibrated to Stork fabrics and inks. The fabric used in the initial startup was not pretreated by Stork, but was instead from a vendor that we use for production in the Ink Drop Boutique. The result was impressive but was made better by creating a new profile. The new profile was not developed from scratch, but was instead a modified copy of one of the resident profiles.
For those who may not be familiar with the term profile as it relates to digital textile printing, for each combination of fabric, pretreatment, and ink, there is an optimal profile that is used by the RIP (Raster Image Processor) to instruct the printheads in how much of each ink to use when producing a dithered color. This is normally done by printing thousands of color blocks on the target fabric, then after steaming and washing, reading each block with a spectrophotometer to measure the actual color produced, which then allows the RIP to adjust its parameters based on the feedback from the spectrophotometer. This “closed loop” characterization is needed any time a change occurs with fabric, pretreatment or ink. As might be presumed, it is a laborious, time consuming effort, and is prone to error, if one of the thousands of color blocks is read and identified incorrectly.
With the Stork profiles, a much smaller number of color blocks are used. A small set of about four hundred can create a new profile based on an existing one. For more precise calibration, about seven hundred fifty are needed. This significantly shortens the time to begin printing, and if using Stork pretreated fabrics and inks, there is no need to alter the profiles.
Change is good.
Happy Holidays
As another year ticks off the calendar, let us all be thankful for what we have, and plan to share with those in need. Best wishes to all our readers for a happy holiday season.
Until next month, be safe in life, and in computing.
Jud