Denim jeans

The efficient way to sew a pair of denim jeans

A report on automated sewing machines,
in
Clothing Construction Techniques

[pic]

Charlotte Andersson, Elisa Bariendos
and Charlotte Eisenhauer
30.09.2005

Focus

For a retailer, in order to be able to stay competitive, labour costs is a critical factor. This is also the main reason why many companies chose to locate their garmentproduction in countries like China and India, where wages are very low compared to Europe and USA. Though, the aim is to be able to offer competitive garments produced within Western Europe by reducing manufacturing costs, thereby essentially labour costs. The way to enable this is by using as automated, fast and up-to date equipment and sewing machines as possible.

Definition
Denim jeans arechosen since there are a lot of different sewing steps which can be automated and work aids that can be used in order to facilitate the work for the operators, compared to e.g. t-shirts. The chosen pair has a button fly, seven belt loops, a waistline, two back pockets with embroideries, two front pockets, lap seams on the outside of the legs, hems at the bottom etc.

Sewing steps with focus on theareas of savings:

Jeans Front Pocket: AT116SL

For this operation we have chosen a Programmable Jeans front Pocket AT116SL, Hems & tapes curved jeans front pocket are made without twist or roll-out individually for both, hemming left and right pockets.
The single upturn hemmer hems the curved front pocket while attaching the pocket lining and tape. An electronically controlled fast actionknife cuts the tape flush without stopping.
The operator just has to place the pocket and the lining in the folder. Sewing begins and the fast action knife cuts the tape flush on the leading edge. At the completion of sew, the trailing edge tape is also trimmed flush.
The production of this machine is approximately 207 pieces per hour depending on material and size of parts.

Jeans BackPockets: TC 138EB-FG Automatic Pocket Setting Machine
These machines completely automate the pocket attaching and setting operations, so any operator can use these machines as efficiently as the next.
The TC138EB-FG pocket setting machine automatically folds and sews the pocket onto the trouser panel in exactly the same place and with equal high quality every time.
The entire operation takes only 12seconds. (Manually this is normally at least 1.5 minutes).
Specifications TC 138EB - FG
• Machine Head  Brother B774 
• Seam control unit Brother BAS300E series 
• Feeding System Intermittent feed, pulse motor drive (1 pulse 0.05mm)
• Folding area 220 x 220mm (190 x 190 with 138E low cost clamp) 
• Sewing speed  3300 rpm 
• Stitch length 0.015 - 12.7 mm 
• Needlestroke 41 mm 
• Power source 1 phase 220V AC 
• Machine dimension    1900 (W) x 1700 (D) x 1450 (H) mm
• Machine weight 420 KG
BAS-311 & 326 BAS-326 (Pocket decorations
All decorative shapes would take many minutes to sew using a basic machine.
Using a BAS-326 all these patterns can be sewn in less than 10 seconds.
The patterns are easy to make using a hand held programmingpanel and they can be easily stored on standard low cost floppy disks.

Automatic setting pocket Machine
Normally, using a basic machine, this operation can take 30 seconds while using the TC B260 takes less than 2 seconds to accurately hem a 20cm pocket.
No skill or training is required to hem over 15,000 pockets in 8 hours. It also trims the thread chain automatically at the start and end ofeach pocket. Thereby completely eliminating this time consuming extra task.

Specifications  TCB26

• Machine type: Brother B261 2 needle chain stitch 
• Needle gauge1/4" (6.35mm) or 9/32" (7.1mm) 
• Sewing speed 4000 SPI 
• Feed system Step motor conveyer belt
• Power supply 220 volts 1 phase 
• Dimensions   155 W x 90 D x 140 H cm

Buttonholes

Buttonholes...