Software spots textile flaws

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January 15, 1997
Web posted at: 3:30 p.m. EST

PHENIX CITY, Alabama (CNN) -- Amid the clatter of high-speed looms, workers at the local textile factory laboriously comb through roll after roll of fabric, searching for possible cloth defects. It's a time-consuming and costly process that often leads to inconsistent results. But thanks to emerging technology the system could soon change.

Scientists at Georgia Tech have developed new software aimed at automating the inspection process. The end result could not only boost factories' quality control -- it could also improve a vast number of products, from lawn furniture to shirts.

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Lew Dorrity, professor at Georgia Tech University,
explains the new technology

	(431K/19 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)
	(202K/23 sec. QuickTime movie)

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The new method uses miniature cameras to scan the cloth as it moves through looms at a rate of nearly 1 foot per minute. The images appear on a nearby computer, which then records the nature and location of any imperfection.

"The key is really in analyzing the image that comes from those cameras because the defects are sometimes hidden by the background in the fabric or the variation in the fabric," said Lew Dorrity of Georgia Tech.

Georgia Tech developed the software with a grant from the National Textile Center, a consortium of four universities -- Tech, Auburn University, North Carolina State University and Clemson University.

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A half-million-dollar grant from the Commerce Department financed the project.

According to Dorrity, the next step for researchers will be to perfect a paper printout that would essentially be a roadmap showing where the defections lie. That way, he said, workers could tell which areas of fabric are so defective they must be removed.

Bart Krulic of Johnston Industries said most textile customers would appreciate such a roadmap.

"A customer does not mind if there are some defects as long as he knows where the defects are so that he can cut them out," he said. (134K/6 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

Meanwhile, West Virginia-based Appalachian Electronic Instruments hopes to hit the market within a year with the new defect-spotting system. It'll cost about $4,000 per unit.

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on next week's Tomorrow/Today

 

Related sites:

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• The National Textile Center
  The National Textile Center is a consortium of four universities designed to spearhead technology improvements throughout the textile industry.
  
  
• Georgia Tech's School of Textile & Fiber Engineering
  Georgia Tech's department is dedicated to training textile professionals for the technology wave that looms in the future.
  
  
• Other suggested links from the National Textile Center
• Dr. J. Lewis Dorrity bio
• Auburn University Textile Engineering Department
• Clemson University: School of Textiles, Fibers and Polymers
• North Carolina State University, College of Textiles

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