The weaving specialist Stäubli presented its new weaving solutions from jacquard machines to warp control and customer portal at ITMA 2023. The company attracted the great attention of visitors and delegations from leading textile producers countries. In the interview with Stäubli Textile Marketing Officer Fritz Legler and Stäubli Textile Communication and Media Relations Officer Nadine Reinwald, we talked about ITMA 2023 and the new solutions they have exhibited.
Legler said that they have brought many new products from preparation and dobby weaving to jacquard weaving and carpet weaving to ITMA 2023, noting that that is why visitors have had a lot of interest. Legler stated that they were satisfied with the exhibition and continued: “We had a high traffic of visitors coming through our booth. We have a lot of interest from Türkiye, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. We have also welcomed a big delegation from Brazil as well as important weavers from Peru, America and Mexico.”
Detailed detection at full production speed
Fritz Legler, mentioning the products they exhibited at ITMA 2023, disclosed their new Active Warp Control 2.0 for maximum productivity. Legler disclosed: “The main benefit of Active Warp Control 2.0 is detecting the finest colour nuances. Running colours may have nuances and different shades of the same colour, which is very difficult to recognise by the eye. We can do that now by the machine up to 40 colours on the machine, and the running colours can be very easily detected and most important is that it can be done at the full production speed of the drawing-in machine.”
Weavers increase their flexibility with Stäubli’s jacquard machines
Fritz Legler reminded that they have been in the market with jacquard weaving machines for a very long time, and said that they are very excited to have brought along a complete range of new jacquard machines ranging from 64 to 52000 hooks. Legler also stated that if users co, they can do more than 50.000 dens in a style and that nnect them together they can do more than 50.000 dens in a style and noted that so, they offer a wide range of jacquard machines for whatever the end user wants to weave.
He also mentioned the cam motions 1600/1700 series that have been introduced 4 years ago and said that now they have several thousand units already in the market. Noting that this time they introduce a new rotary dobby, S3280, Legler disclosed that they show it through running at 1550 picks per minute which is obviously very fast and industrially they can also run this dobby at 1200 picks per minute.
Different products on one machine
The brand-new weaving machine ALPHA 580 UNIVERSAL was another solution that attracted visitors’ attention at the Stäubli booth. Fritz Legler noted that ‘UNIVERSAL’ refers to flexibility and explained the details as follows: “If customers buy our carpet weaving machine, they just do not buy one machine for a woven product, but they can do various products on the same machine. So, the novelty is many new features on the weaving machine, brand new dobby and brand-new jacquard machine which is a beam setup that we have a proper running-in of the ends. Thus, we have higher productivity, fewer stops in the machine and even better carpet quality at the end. The main benefit of our carpet weaving machine is the 3-position jacquard machine for excellent quality in the carpet at the end of the day.”
The customers achieve full productivity with Stäubli Portal
Fritz Legler stated that they have IoT and cloud solutions for active productivity control and thanks to this, customers know exactly what they are talking about. He explained the details of the Stäubli Portal as follows: “The Stäubli Portal offers personal access for each customer. Within the portal, you have what we call the equipment centre and under this, you have all your machines listed which you have brought from our company. For everyone, you can do anything from maintenance to scheduling. It includes also tutorials and all the spare parts. Then if you go more specifically into connecting the machines to our cloud and the outcomes it provides, we can make sure customers have full productivity and thus it also provides maintenance with this.”
“Sustainability cannot go without innovation”
Nadine Reinwald, reminding that the main theme of ITMA 2023 is sustainability, talked about their sustainable solutions. Reinwald stated that their machines are recognised for longevity and high-quality materials and noted that they have three main topics at the moment: energy saving, recyclability and longevity. Reinwald continued: “As for energy consumption, this is where the innovation comes to play. As a leading supplier in the textile industry, we have to be at the forefront of innovation. Sustainability cannot go without innovation in the whole textile value chain. In this sense, as we improve the whole electronic architecture inside our jacquard machines together with MXPro Module. these stand for big energy consumption reduction. We could improve the airflow inside of the machine and so the running temperatures can be perfectly equalized. It helps that the machine runs even more reliably and you saved energy.”
Mentioning that they have two scopes in recyclability, Reinwald said that they want to know in their machines which materials can be recycled and they list the materials that cannot be recycled. Reinwald disclosed that they work for this together with an external institution from France and relayed: “They have standards for all industries and now we can quite proud because we got first results. For instance, our jacquard machines have a recyclability of 99% and for all our products this rate is over 90%.” In addition, Reinwald emphasised the importance of design for deconstruction, saying: “This is our engineers take this already into coming for several years now because if you want to recycle, you have to be able to unbuild something.”
Fritz Legler pointed out that institutional sustainability is also a key point, saying that in their many manufacturing plants, they already have solar panels for reducing they already have solar panels in their many manufacturing plants energy consumption. Stating that they are currently conducting full print analysis in different manufacturing sites and they work together with external partners for reliability, he concluded: “We will continue our research and activities in sustainability in our institution and also to support our customers toward future demands of textiles.”