Lace cutting for the next millennium

The problems of pattern cutting as applied to flexible elastic mesh fabrics (lace) are described within the context of the total manufacturing process. While the design and knitting stages of lace manufacture are highly computerised, providing associated benefits, the cutting room operates with conventional, slow, labour intensive machinery, leading to substantial processing bottlenecks and dependent costs. A new system is presented which uses machine vision to determine the required cutting path on the lace fabric in real‐time via sophisticated, yet high speed, image processing algorithms. The determined cutting path data are used to direct a high speed CO₂ laser beam to the correct cutting point with beam velocities of typically 6 m/sec. Simultaneous dual edge cutting is now possible using this new system, leading to lace throughput being increased by a factor of ten typically, with the possibility of processing more sophisticated designs and achieving higher cut edge quality.