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Conclusion

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Textile industry was and is one of the largest industries of eastern and western countries, added huge amount

to its national economy. Apart from providing employment for larger percent of the population, several

ancillary industries like chemical, dye and dyeing, lathe machinery, printing, processing and many morewere sprouted out that directly or indirectly to support the main root, the textile industry.

Since the time unmemorable, it is learnt from history that the primitive man, the hunter who lived in forests,

wandered from place to place in search of food, protected his body with fleece, animal hyde, leaves, bark,

climber and other similar natural materials. These hunters though far away from the civilization expressed

their flare for self-adornment using the forest vegetation, animal skin, bone, horn, teeth, as a symbol of

strength and bravery.

With the passage of time the hunters became cultivators, who took up farming as their profession, grew food

crops along with the plants of natural fibres�flax and cotton. The spinning, basketry, weaving and colouring

with natural dyes gradually knitted in the beautiful life of mankind. Even the ancient excavations showed the

evidence of ornamentations through colours, dyes and embroidery. Cave paintings, pot paintings, bodily

paintings in general indicated that painting on the cloth was the first step to add colour on to cloth.

The industrialization introduced innumerable innovative techniques in every field, especially in textile

sector. The textile industry grew gradually in every country, and is now recognized as one of the most

flourishing industries at global scenario. The outcome of intensive research and development in the raw

materials�fibre, yarn and fabric is incredible. Many textile industries in the process of R&D with latest

technology are concentrating on New Product Development especially high tech smart textiles.

However, for the convenience of the study, the textile manufacturing industries may be grouped as industrial

and apparel & home textiles on the basis of their application. Most consumers are not actually aware of the

segment of textile industry, known as �industrial textiles�, which may be in simple words explained as �the

textile material which one can not wear it, sit on it, walk on it, or sleep on it�. Fashion is not a factor in

industrial fabrics instead functional characteristics as strength, durability, serviceability, flexibility, resist-

ance for chemicals are more important. Consumers of industrial products often deal with the civil construc-

tion, mining, sanitation and industrial transport, medicine; military and space; geo-textiles applied in soil

and soil based structures such as road building, dam construction, erosion control and agriculture. Theindustrial fabrics are developed to meet specific requirement with little or no aesthetic value. But textiles

used in automobile and aircraft interiors, and in some luggage and shoes, and for these uses aesthetics are as

important as specific technical requirement.

The apparel and home textiles many times are not only functional but may be decorative too; sometimes

more aesthetic than functional and rarely more functional than decorative. The decoration of textiles formu-

lates another giant branch of apparel and home textiles where the artists and designers play a vital role to

beautify the yardage to provide better choice for the consumers.

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96 Surface Designing of Textile Fabrics

The end product and/or fabric of specific end use often recognize textile companies. Mills may produce

fabrics for various segments of the market but most develop fabrics exclusively for one end use. The apparel

industry is the largest textile sector produces variety of children�s wear, women�s wear, men�s wear, sports

wear, outer wear, inner wear, hosiery, lingerie, swim suits, accessories like bags, scarves, hats, parasols,gloves and many more.

Similarly home textiles encompass bed linen, table linen, towels, shower curtains, table tops, and so on.

Another sector of the mill that produces draperies, curtains, upholstery, floor coverings that are used for

home (often referred as residential decorative, or home furnishings area) and those for commercial use such

as office, hotels, or hospital interiors (called the contract area).

The artist or designer is the one who has strong background in basic design and colour principles to work

creatively in the textile field. The textile designer�s job is multifaceted, requiring thorough understanding of

the customer for whom the product is intended, knowledge of related and competing products and any sphere

that influences the design world, and mastery of technical considerations of fabric production. Perhaps most

important for the designer is the ability to present new ideas at appropriate time and place so that the

intended market can make best use of them.

The spine of the designer�s career is their artwork in the studio. The creation, designing, and completion of

artwork on paper are the base from which the aesthetic features of fabric are woven. Ideas for techniques,

materials, and references encourage new interpretations and experimentations.

Apart from the skill and updated knowledge, the designer must be able to anticipate future trends and co-

ordinate the release of new fabrics for future forecast and peak marketability. In general the consumers who

continuously aspire for change, new and unique or exclusive, dictate the marketability of the textile. In fact

this trend of change is universally referred as fashion. Historically certain trends are cyclic, because the

consumers when tired or bored with one design trend or style wish for a change. The change is often seen

with respect to colour, design or motif or pattern and style. The motif, colour and style are interdependent

since are the part and parcel of textile designing. The change in motif and colour would ultimately decide the

style. Through intuitive ability and research, the designer must be committed to the emerging trends well

ahead of the time.

The artists get inspiration and gather valuable information from historical records, books, magazines, muse-

ums, historical societies, art galleries, sculptures, civil works, textile collections, trade periodicals, trade

shows, fashion shows etc. The display of fabrics in well-known major museums is the wonderful source for

the designers to draw attention towards motifs or designs of a particular era.

A designer�s job is not only to respond to customers demand but also to cultivate taste within the public.

When a designer receives negative reaction to a product, should find a way to show the idea in another way

that will be better accepted.

Thus, a good designer must keep up with any facet of life, which may affect the design but never confine to

the work that has been already done before or the one is being done currently. The textile industry like any

other business, desires to continue with products that are saleable. However, a new idea, expressed in a new

way and well presented will boost sales. The essence of textile design is to market these new ideas.

Colour and design are closely associated in many of the objects surrounding us; the form and colour of oneobject against the background of another form and colour makes the universe meaningful. Although a large

percentage of plain coloured fabrics have no design, a great amount of textile designing could be achieved by

application of colour to attain or to emphasise the design form and its details.

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The history of man�s use of colour and design is most fascinating; the colour and design have been used by all

pre historic people in climates ranging from temperate to tropical all over the world. In colder climates

there was more limitation on colour.

Colouring fabric is the primary mode of decoration, has very limited variety. Dipping the grey or bleached

fabric in the dye bath, colours the fabric uniformly without any pattern, but of course is a means to improve

the aesthetic appeal.

Yarn dyeing has lead to a greater variety of patterns, when woven. The stripes, checks, plaids, shirting,

gingham, madras are the live examples of geometric patterns created through weaving. Union fabrics woven

with warp and weft of each different colour, say for instance light and dark shades respectively produced

double coloured or shaded effect, usually referred as � Dhoop-Chawn� or �day-night � or �shot colours�.

� Ikat � is another example of yarn dyed fabric rooted from Indonesia where either warp or weft yarns or both

are tie-dyed prior to weaving and interlaced in order to produce irregular patterns across the cloth width.

Clear and well outlined motifs can be woven by interlacing tie-dyed warp and weft yarns very carefully and

skilfully.

Similar to ikats, �tie-dyed� designs are a class of resist style patterns famous worldwide, where the substrateis woven fabric. Apart from basic 5�6 methods of tying techniques, combination of two or more techniques

produces interesting effects. The tie-dyed patterns in India is called as �bandhani� means, a small tiny spot

effect either round or square.

The preparatory processes involved in ikat weaving and tie-dyeing is relatively elaborate and labour inten-

sive. The artisans still have preserved the rich heritage of this craft by continuing their occupation from

generation to generation, depicting the warmth of their culture. In fact this profession is a livelihood for

many, who earn better returns especially in the tourists places. However, these fabrics occupy a prominent

place in the fashion cycle, as they have endless utility and application initiating from dress materials to

home furnishings, wall decorations, made-ups, garment accessories including scarves and handkerchiefs.

Innumerable dyed materials in variegated shades and tints are available in the market to satisfy the con-

sumer needs. The fabric dyed in single colour has its own beauty but gradient effects of monochromatic

colour further enhance its appearance. The textile materials dyed in cool and warm colours are the fabricsof seasons.

Of the many advantages of dyed substrate, the prime one being, creating patterns against coloured ground.

The technique of creating patterns against coloured ground is the unique feature of discharge printing where

the discharging agent reduces the colour thus, producing dark coloured ground with light coloured pattern.

Localized dyeing is another term used for printing, the technique dates back at least two thousand years.

Initially the fabric was hand printed but today is done with sophisticated computer aided processes.

Printed fabrics exhibited wider diversity than dyed, probably new printing techniques being constantly added

to the old list in order to satisfy the consumer behaviour. Consumer buying behaviour is unpredictable that

keeps changing several times before a final purchase is made. However, the printed fabrics have provided

greater scope for consumer choice and sales promotion.

In fact the patterned fabrics of course are more attractive and appealing than the simply dyed ones. The fact

being that motifs used on textile materials are infinite, sorted from natural, stylised, geometrical andabstract categories printed with unlimited colour ways. It is amazing to learn that no two fabrics would ever

have same motifs until and unless intended for. A simple naturalistic floral motif could be modified into

geometrical or stylised or even abstract, by skilful manipulation. A designer may modify a realistic floral

motif into stylised and another designer in turn may modify slightly this stylised floral motif into a new one,

thus the concept of patenting textile motif or design is far from reality.

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Unlimited effects and patterns can be produced by repeating a single motif in definite yet different orders.

Some of the major pattern repeating orders are block, brick, drop and step; furthermore, the skilful combi-

nation of these repeating orders would result into wonderful designs.

The principal virtue of printed, as opposed to woven, patterned cloth is that printing technology allows a

number of colours to be introduced into a design and is relatively inexpensive. A further advantage to a

printed textile is that a perfect copy of any object, for instance a flower, could be obtained. With prevailing

sophisticated colour printing processes, accurate with finely detailed flower in all colour range is possible.

Most printed cloth mass-produced is inexpensive but the hand printed fabrics are relatively expensive. In

general the printed fabric is lighter in weight than its woven counterparts. Of course the quality and the

texture of fabric would greatly affect the printed design.

In the past many textiles were hand printed and the most beautiful and popular one in the eighteenth century

was the Indian calico. In the west, hand printing is the revived art. Unlike hand printing, hand painting gives

the designer an unique opportunity to create a design, but consequently it has greater value than printed

textiles. This area of handycraft is labour intensive and very elaborate, thus time consuming. Indian

� kalamkari� is internationally known hand painted textile; natural colours with mordant produced good

number of shades, exclusively an eco-friendly fabric. Though hand painting is the imitation for textiledesigning, not frequently and abundantly used for surface designing especially in mass-producing sectors.

The personnel involved or engaged in hand painting need to have thorough knowledge on tracing or transfer-

ring the design, mixing colours to obtain intermediate shades, colour consistency and use of neutral colours.

Painted patterns are much different from printed, in terms of hand and feel, the former being relatively stiff

and less rendering.

Surface enrichment by colouring with dyes or a coloured pattern through printing and painting is entirely

different from decoration evolved with thread work, commonly referred, as embroidery may be hand, ma-

chine or computer assisted stitchery on a woven fabric. The term embroidery covers a variety of skills,

which use the stitch as a major patterning device. Often the term embroidery is referred as applied art,

because it involved stitching of a pattern or image using variety of threads like, cotton, silk, rayon, wool,

synthetics and metallic threads like gold, silver and at times even copper too. The quality coloured silk yarn

ravelled from the old or worn out dresses and made-ups was used for hand embroidery in earlier days. Thedelicate and finely hand embroidered patterns appeared almost like woven designs and it is needless to say

that these embroidered articles priced remarkably high in the international markets. The handwork and hand

skill are the root cause for hand embroidery, which is unique regionwise with respect to types of stitches,

threads and colour combination, design/motif, ground cloth and products or articles embroidered on.

Machine embroidery though has simplified the hand stitching with respect to time and labour but the essence

of intricacy, delicacy and aesthetic appeal remained untouched. Hence, till date the hand embroidery in the

world of art and decoration has treasured its name and fame. Though the computers have taken the charge of

embroidery in the recent years, the power driven embroidery machine yet monopolizes the market since the

former being very expensive to be invested for domestic or small-scale production. However, some of the

hand embroideries, by their very nature, labour intensive and some cannot be translated to machine produc-

tion. Since the artistic skills are gradually becoming extinct, many of the embroidered textiles available

today are often antique. However, the government and NGO functionaries are working on the revival of

applied textile-making skills and interpreting them in new and exciting ways.

The thread work worked into an embroidery pattern is an attractive and pleasing mode of surface designing

the textile material. It is very much true that the threads/yarns create miracles in the field of textile

designing. Embroidery is worked against a ground fabric, that�s how it differs from woven design, which

primarily works with yarns, texture and patterns given by the weave, rather than a surface design. Thus, all

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Conclusion 99

the woven patterns are categorised as structural designs, a mode of designing that is remarkably expensive

than dyeing and printing. Though weaving involves manipulation of interlacement order of two sets of yarns,

the warp and the weft or three sets of yarns, the warp, the weft and either extra warp or extra weft, can

produce almost infinite design structures by permutation and combination of yarns of several origin, yarn type, yarn size, weaves, textures, design repeat, design base, colour ways and weaving machines employed.

The simple grey fabric taken from the loom need to undergo one or the other finish may be basic/special or

mechanical/chemical that in turn would be permanent or temporary in order to have better acceptance in the

market. These finishes consist of application of a wide variety of treatments and special processes that give

the fabric some quality that is needed to enhance its aesthetic or performance properties. Some finishes

modify appearance, some modify behaviour and some modify both appearance and behaviour of the fabric.

Many surface finishes have greater impact on the appearance of the fabric. Sometimes these finishes pro-

duce a related change in the texture or hand-feel or both and occupy an important position in textile design-

ing.

Handloom fabrics, once upon a time produced were world famous for the textures, fineness, light-weight,

transparent appearance and the best example is the Dacca Muslin, woven with yarns of 1200s, in India. The

legend described this muslin as �woven air �, �evening dew � and �running water �. With advent of new syntheticyarns and weaving machines, the horizon of creating woven patterns expanded and especially with jacquard

looms.

Joseph Marie Jacquard, the son of silk weaver inherited his father�s small weaving business, but because of

unfavourable trade, changed his employment. In 1790 he was given the task of restoring the loom made by

Jacques de Vaucasan. Working on this loom led to him developing a keen interest in the mechanization of

silk manufacture. The silk wage weavers, fear of unemployment resulted in destruction of Jacquard�s first

loom but the French government took over the invention and Jacquard was honoured with a royalty on every

loom sold.

Although the history of weaving technology is age old, there is still a need for modernizing the existing

method of weave designing. The classical way of producing a jacquard design is a very costly and time-

consuming affair. The designers were facing difficulty in keeping pace with the fast changing trends of the

market to meet quick response. These are the driving forces behind the use of Computer Aided Designingsystems in textile industry. CAD is the tool to a designer to enhance his imaginative power and efficiency.

It offers great potentiality to the designer to innovate his ideas and experiment with them.

The developments in modern weaving technologies have resulted in a considerable increase in the loom

speed, quality production and reduction on cost, time and labour.

Ultimately when the weavers were asked on what were they looking for? Their answer was a machine that

could produce a shed with least effects, at the same time controlling this effect by means of computer data

transferred electronically to the jacquard head, that would be capable of running at realistic modern weaving

speeds with minimum maintenance and at a practical cost to the weaver.

A modern jacquard of average configuration operating on a high speed-weaving machine can involve nearly

700 million selection processes in an eight-hour shift. If the jacquard has to perform error-free over long

periods, the high performance could only be achieved by major changes in its operation. Some of the

important modifications achieved were minimizing the movement in primary motions, using lightweight

reinforced plastics and materials with high wear resistance, extra ordinary fine tolerances in engineering

and fitting, and minimizing down times. The conventional machinery complex often required lubrication

with oil that inevitably found its way into the harness and then into the cloth. Thus, the solution was to have

minimum number of moving parts and have no oiling points or oil stains, which adversely affect the fabric.

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Tremendous developments were also brought about in the input units. With the electronic jacquards, the

cylinder and cards were totally eliminated. The electronic device, the solenoids, has replaced the mechani-

cal selection process by needles, which prevailed in the conventional jacquard.

The main objective of the electronic jacquard was the same as the mechanical jacquard but due to the high

speed required, electric circuits and solenoids replaced mechanical selection devices.

Similar to conventional jacquards, all electronic jacquards employ two hooks for each warp end and work on

the pulley principle.

The electronic jacquards may be grouped into two depending on the position of hooks during selection,

whether at its top-most position or at bottom-most position.

CAD is not really new; it is essentially a natural progression when dealing with complicated point paper

designs. Systems of this kind were used in assisting the punching of cards and creative works. The effect of

using the same system to convert floppy disk or cassette directly into CDROM or cartridge, or even hard

wired on to the jacquard head, is simply the elimination of card punching, elimination of people who have to

climb often in precarious situations to change the bulky sets of cards, and of the storage of cards, which

would take enormous storage space. Also some systems offer the possibility of adjustments to the design on loom and the speed of calling the design onto the screen from the archive is negligible compared to the work

involved in adjustments on punched cards. Surely the installation of jacquard on to the modern and most

sophisticated looms eliminates the existing problem of keeping the antiquated machinery. Hence, the elec-

tronic jacquard is the solution of economy with flexibility.

The main function of the electronic system is to programme the magnetic tape cassettes used as programme

carrier for the electronically controlled jacquard machines. This system is based on manual reading-in or on

reading-in by camera or scanner and is connected to powerful computer.

Introducing new technology like CAD systems electronic jacquard will certainly attract the young, bright,

and enthusiastic people into the textile industry. It certainly needs them if the industry has to continue to

flourish.

The emerging electronic jacquards have a tremendous impact on industrial and commercial trends. The

industry was technically driven then, but now it is design driven. Many scholars from Art Schools are morechallenging because of extra ordinary design skills than technical know�how of jacquard or dobby weaving.

Today the runs are shorter and designs, which are suitable in the market, are for a short time. Thus the

equation may be, the design made in 2000 was almost three folds than the ones made in 1990.But the meters

of fabric woven per design would amount for only one third of the length.

The jacquard heads are getting bigger each year; there are looms that may have a pattern repeat of 1.4

meter. The looms have very high weaving efficiencies with one weaver supervising 20 machines. It is

apparent that though the capital investment is high but there would be a remarkable reduction on labour cost

per meter off fabric. This is an ideal combination for high labour cost, high skill countries like USA and

Europe.

When the jacquards became electronic, in a matter of time they were networked. But it is surprising that

only a small portion of the total weavers is networked in the global scenario. The network has two advan-

tages: low labour cost and few errors; though the cost of design charge are less, the firm can make shorterruns/length without reducing profits.

Another emerging field of surface designing where networking has made remarkable progress is digital

printing.

Ink jet technology has developed to a point where it is driving a growing multi-billion dollar industry

worldwide. The development of chemistry (ink) for this printing is expanding its application beyond paper

printing to textile and industrial printing and fluid deposition.

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Conclusion 101

Digital printing is one of the many enabling technologies with respect to this division. Despite some limita-

tions in terms of colour, speed and print quality, the value of digital printing has been recognized and

technology adopters visualizing its impact for sampling, sales and merchandising. On the positive side, there

is plenty of evidence for the continuation of technological advances to support the shift from vision to reality.

Digital printing aims to provide large cost reduction for converters and printers, significantly increase new

product choices, shorter time to develop new products and leverage expertise in colour separation.

Designing different types of products that leverage the advantage of digital printing is the first milestone

towards rethinking about implement of digital printing, which means sales and marketing strategies that

leverage short run production i.e., thinking about the business from the perspective of mass customisation as

opposed to mass production. The �agile manufacturing� refers to the ability to print, cut, sew and ship

immediately on demand.

The traditional chemistries used in textile printing are becoming available as ink jet inks for many printing

systems, being offered. Dye inks tailored to the end use and pigmented inks offering good functional perform-

ance are made available in the market.

Ink jet printing is non-impact or non-contact printing method, projecting drops of ink on to surfaces to be printed. There are two types of ink jet printers�the coarse with maximum resolution of 40 dpi, essentially

found its application in textile industry; the finer printer offer resolution up to 300 dpi can print as continuous

stream (CS) and drop-on demand (DOD).

The grey fabric has to undergo a couple of preparatory processes viz., singeing, desizing, scouring and

bleaching to remove impurities and to provide fabric a uniform absorbency and whiteness. This processed

substrate is then pre-treated with selective chemicals, an important feature of ink jet printing that varied

with types of dyes used in the inks. For instance alginates on cotton to control penetration, urea to enhance

the hue depth, alkali to form covalent bond between dye and fibre and so on.

Ink jet inks may be broadly grouped as solvent based inks are dye and pigment, and water based inks viz.,

acid dye, disperse dye (sublimation), reactive dye, pigments with and without binders applied as per the

affinity between fibre and ink. However, care must be taken to consider the compatibility between substrate

and its pre-treatment, printing ink, method of printing and post printing finish applied to enhance the colour-fastness.

Theoretically 4 basic colours cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y) and black (B) inks are used in process

colour printing but there are printers with 7,8 and 12 colour capacity, which achieve much closer results

desired by the textile industry. However, the hardware and ink options available to the textile industry are

the reflection of a growing market that has yet to develop standards.

Colour management and Raster Image Processor (RIP) software manage colour by creating profiles or

characterization specific to the printer, ink, fabric and any post processing such as steaming and washing. In

fact RIP basically is a means of communication between the computer and printer that assists with ink

limitations, basic profile tweaking, scaling and layout prints on the fabric.

Digital printing of textiles is a new concept and with the exception of sampling, presently is not widely used

hence hard to classify the defects and even harder to rate in order of frequency. However the most common

problems: misfits, stick-ins, scrimps, wicking and dithering, which can easily be overcome by appropriateengineering, alignment of screens, proper feeding of the substrate in the printer and suitable fabric

preparation.

Several textile designers are concentrating on vitalizing the surface design techniques by researching and

reinventing the indigenous methods prevailed in various cultures worldwide. Combining multiple techniques

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insists artists to take up the task of pre-treating the substrate, in order to ensure acceptable colour fastness

may be steaming, washing or any similar after treatment.

In other words, the development of digital textile printing technology has challenged today�s artists, design-

ers and craftsmen to rethink how they could move forward within the textile design field. In fact it is very

encouraging to see a large number of artists experimenting their traditional surface designing technique with

emerging ink jet technology. Hand painting, resist dyeing, discharge and burnout indigenous techniques are

now been tried to blend with ink jet printing to create new-age cloth.

The print innovations shall change the entire face of traditional surface design and digital technology by

blending craftsmanship, that create a market for micro-manufacturers and small scale print shops to create

impact on the fashion, textile, home furnishing and interior design industries.

While analog print methods best address the need of mass production and increase quality printing, the

digital printing can best serve demands for variable information on quick response, just-in-time delivery and

short print outs. Digital printing has many advantages over analog printing: it requires minimal press set up;

dose not use film masters, stencils, screens or plates; uses less hazardous chemicals; leaves meagre waste

and results in less negative environmental impact; digital process has replaced optical and manual methods

but extended digital processing for Internet, CD-ROM, Video and TV, print media and multimedia.

Whether print the image digitally or analogically or blending both techniques few factors to be considered

are�image quality and resolutions, process speed, durability, applicability both indoor and outdoor, eco-

friendliness, consistency in the colour, reproducibility and ultimately cost of production.

Digital printing is not an easy task. It involved considerable labour like loading the printer with the fabric

bolts, steaming the fabric after printing, hand washing, and regular printer maintenance. But there is nothing

better than creating something beautiful on fabric, which is truly one-of-a-kind.

Digital printing is an emerging technology and process within the new supply chain. Most of the adopters of

this technologies face challenges with some limitations. But the companies are making it happen today on a

variety of levels, despite the barriers.

The current ink jet configuration covers productivity ranging over 200 square meters per hour. As production

speeds and print quality enhances the capital and consumable cost decreases. Analog printing technologieswill continue to hold quality and production speed advantages for the near future but digital improvements

for the next decade may continue to erode analog market share.

Market demands for reduced inventory risk, quick response, variable information processing, personaliza-

tion and customisation are favourably influencing the adoption of digital imaging and ink jet printing tech-

nologies. They have grown to dominate niches and segments of textile printing. Its expansion could open new

vista of application that may replace analog printing and occupy global market share.

Today creating patterns on advanced looms has been simplified by interfacing computer system. Automation,

computer application and development of sophisticated electronic control system have made �quick re-

sponse� and �just-in-time� manufacturing possible. These technologies are applied almost every step of the

manufacturing process.

The computer-aided design (CAD) in textiles is applied to yarns, weave structures (fabrics), and colour

ways. Eventually there is CAD software, which are also applied in garment designing/styling and manufac-

turing as well as production of knitted goods. With the CAD programmes the designer can make patterns and

modify the ideas on the monitor at a faster rate thus, speeding up the productivity. Computer generated

designs allow for faster transfer of the design to engraved screens and CAD assists to simulate the design

ideas. However, a couple of disadvantages encountered are; the colours in computer print outs are not as

true as those in painted representation of design, the traditional means of depicting printed or woven design.

Back up tapes are to be maintained to protect the computer memory when power outlays.

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Conclusion 103

Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) helps with the production of fabrics. Specific areas of application

include electronic equipment for monitoring operations, equipment that controls specific operation and

equipment that diagnoses and corrects the errors. Often CAM system eliminates some of the steps in the

product processing. �Quick response� and �just-in-time� are the words of textile industry, where computers play a key role to monitor inventories and store and retrieve data about raw materials, process of order and

linkages with customers. This kind of inter-system communications are referred as Computer Integrated

Manufacturing (CIM). The systems that are not compatible probably inhibit electronic communication

between different segments of the industry.

The textile and apparel industries have formed an organization funded jointly, largely by matching grants

from the industry and federal government, called the Textile/Clothing Technology Corporation (TC)². The

main objective of this organization is to conduct research on application of electronic technology in both

textile and apparel industries in turn educate the engineers, technologists, designers, merchandisers, educa-

tors and executives on automated system, their potential and application.

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