SoftWear Automation has unveiled the next generation of Lowry Sewbot. The company has been working to make the Sewbot a platform for industrial sewing automation. What makes the Lowry special is the sheer number of products, operations and styles that one system can handle without an operator and without it being retooled, reprogrammed or re-configured.
Since the beginning, the company has worked to make the Sewbot a platform for industrial sewing automation. While sewing is at the centre of that challenge, the company has been successful because of its ability to master material handling like picking, placing, moving, stacking, lifting, holding, labeling, welding and more. As it turns out, automated sewing may be the easiest part of sewing automation.
“Our major advancements in this next generation Sewbot have come from our improved vision technology, which has put us light years ahead in flexible production automation from our previous releases. There is no question that textiles present challenges unique to industrial automation. Our needs as consumers to have textile products that are light, breathable, stretchable and fashionable creates an ever changing landscape of complexity. Unlike hardware intensive solutions, vision technology allows the Sewbot to adapt to handling the unique pieces of a material good,” the company says.
“Our machine vision is at the core of every Sewbot and updates in real time for extreme sewing precision,” it says.
The vision technology recognises material shape, size, fabric, style and sewing requirements in order to calculate and complete full automation of a product. This means minimal retooling is required any time a change or an upgrade is made to the style or appearance of the product – reducing cost, down time and labour. The machine vision also allows to see material distortion in real time and to dynamically adjust to correct that distortion without any programming, resulting in high quality produced goods each and every time.
“Our vision technology can identify imperfections in material as small as 2 millimeters,” the company says.
The Lowry allows for efficient production of sewn goods. Made of durable industrial-grade steel, the base frame has been upgraded to provide a machine that can run 24/7 and is able to withstand the test of time. Whether from potential damage from giant forklifts or wear and tear from micro particles, it is truly built to last on the factory floor. The Lowry can also undertake simultaneous automated operations, like automated loading, flaw detection, sewing, seaming, cutting, labeling and re-stacking all through a simple control touch panel. One single machine operator is able to control up to six LOWRYs at once, resulting in a significantly higher production scale.
Each operation on the Lowry works simultaneously for a fast, consistent flow of production.
The Lowry enables companies to achieve on-demand production automation with its modular design and interchangeable components. “We understand that every sewn good is constructed differently, which is why the Lowry has flexible configurations to support a variety of goods. Each machine module can be removed, replaced, upgraded, repurposed and repaired depending on unique product specifications.
The Lowry has been used in the automated production of rugs, bath mats, towels, pillows, automotive, and medical products. The Lowry is built to serve a number of different industries, supporting both local and global supply chains. (SV)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India
