The famous USTER® Tester celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, and its unique reputation as a driver of textile quality worldwide is stronger than ever. Even in its earliest version, this remarkable instrument was a big hit with spinning mills, inspiring a new focus on yarn quality. Continuous development throughout the 20th Century saw the USTER® Tester established as essential equipment for the textile laboratory and the word ‘Uster’ become a generic term among mill personnel for evenness testing.
Further progress followed in the new millennium, the USTER® TESTER 6 setting standards even higher by introducing the Total Testing Center – the gateway to integrated quality management of the complete yarn manufacturing process. For most textile professionals, there is really only one evenness tester, now fulfilling its destiny as the undisputed heart of the entire spinning mill. Here, three USTER people describe some of the key development stages.
Peter Hättenschwiler was a 20-year old apprentice, working in the precision engineering department of Zellweger Uster, a well-established and sizeable Swiss company producing a range of textile testing instruments. The year was 1948 and Zellweger, the forerunner of Uster Technologies, was ready to launch the world’s first yarn evenness tester, the USTER® GGP, after four years of development.
Hättenschwiler, now in his 91st year, well remembers assembling this historic instrument: “The GGP® consisted of a capacitive sensor and a diagram recorder, all housed neatly in a state-of-the-art wooden case,†he says. “The device actually looked quite similar to early radios – but it turned out to be a huge success story in the textile industry over the coming decades."