A Laser Surface Design Machine to Improve the Productivity of Textile Manufacture
Ziynet Ondogan
It was a very good idea to promote blue jeans with a faded and torn look, which was a way of expressing poverty to catch the eye. Thus, jean manufacturers started fading and tearing. Faded blue jeans which looked strikingly poor and particularly those with torn legs and bare knees became very popular in a short time amongst young customers. They were even sold at a higher price in certain areas than bright blue jeans which looked brand new. Companies have been trying in recent years to develop various techniques to improve the visual aspects of denim fabrics. These techniques mainly include printing on fabrics, embroidery and washing the final product. Especially, fraying certain areas of the fabric by sanding and stone washing to create designs is a popular technique. However, due to certain disadvantages of these processes and in response to a rapidly growing demand, research is underway to obtain a similar appearance by creating better quality under more advantageous manufacturing conditions. Developing new designs by using the computer and transferring the designs which are obtained to textile surfaces will not only increase and facilitate the production in a practical manner, but also help to create identical designs. This implies mass production of products of the same quality and increasing their profit. Moreover, creating textile designs using a laser will also contribute to the value of the product as far as the consumer is concerned because it will not cause any wear and deformation in the texture of the fabric unlike sanding and stoning processes. In this study, the first step was to prepare 40 pairs of denim samples, half of which were prepared manually and the other half by using a laser. Time studies were made at every stage of production for laser beam ‘designing’ and manual ‘designing’ and the two were compared to determine the differences between the two methods.