Weavetech’s Sumo Electric Mini-Sizing

Weavetech, the twisting & winding machinery manufacturer in India, is set to make a giant leap in sustainability by launch of it’s successful & proven installations of its electric mini-sizing (Beam & Cone-2-Cone) machines at state-of-the-art weaving mills for fine denier & fine count delicate yarns.

While most competing offerings focused on small improvements like incremental speeds or energy consumption, Weavetech took a more holistic view of the Weaving supply chain. It realised that the Weavers were faced with challenges like requirement of smaller lots, reduced lead times and increasing cost of compliance. All these challenges led to increase in costs which were not related to speeds.

Challenge

With weavers upgrading to high-speed shuttleless looms, sized beams became extremely important. Available Beam-Sizing Machineries in the market required huge investments and provided large production capacities with minimum flexibility. Add to that the compliances required running gas / oil / coal based heating systems. And all this setup required huge land & buildings. It is evident, by studying the entire supply chain, that weaving clusters depended on very few Beam-Sizing units in nearby areas and required large minimum-order-qty to run. Independent Beam-Sizing units or service providers became the bottle neck for vast segregated weaving clusters where Weavers were hungry for creativity & control over their supply chain.

Weavers needed a technology that was low on investment, required no special compliance permissions & was cost-effective to run even for small lots. All this while being compact & easy to install & run.

“With Weavetech’s SUMO, we’ve been able to bring back control over quality, lead times & efficiency back into weaving unit while reducing operating costs. Coupled with Solar project, Weavers can expect an excellent competitive advantage over competitors in very near future.”

Chintan Thumar, MD, Weavetech

Solution

Weavetech’s “SUMO” mini-sizing (electric) machine is designed for fine deniers & counts of synthetic filament & synthetic spun yarns. SUMO completely replaces gas / oil / coal based heating systems with new InfraRed &/or ceramic heaters based on application. The heating happens right on the machine & does not require any long pipings which are traditionally prone to heat-loss. This overall reduces the energy consumption for small production lots, allowing more flexibility to run different Warps for in-house setups.

Smart PLC control with many different closed-loop monitoring feedbacks ensures optimum performance of the machine to provide consistent & repeatable quality & performance parameters.

Creative flexibility is offered by ensuring the system can run Filament as well as synthetic spun yarns like polyester, viscose rayon, bemberg, PC, PV, bamboo, hemp & blends. Weavetech’s application R&D centre can help with yarn validation trials on new yarns.

SUMO’s One-Tier Cone-2-Cone Sizing version for creating Sized Cones to be used on Sectional warping for creating Sized Beams.

Customer feedback

SUMO makes it viable for a weaver with 18-24 Airjet looms to bring Beam Sizing in-house and take more control over it’s supply-chain while ensuring optimum quality required for running an efficient weaving unit. The faster paybacks in less than 2 years adds to serious viability of SUMO. If clubbed with Solar or Wind project, the paybacks are typically less than 1.0-1.5 years, while removing complete dependency on external sizing units.

True to its development philosophy of “Best Value is here”, Weavetech continues to invest in Research & Development to bring more such technologies over other core areas of twisting & winding with focus on bringing more creative power & control to the weaving industry.