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Friday, February 05, 2010

How Many Engineers Does it Take...

...to fine-tune a jacquard loom?



Several. From left, that's DH, and Mike and Kim from the AVL technical staff.

Plus one CEO (Bob Kruger is almost hidden behind the jacquard modules in the picture below).



Between them, they tweaked various and sundry parts of the loom, and fixed a number of problems. The modules are now hanging parallel to one another. Now that the spacing is adjusted, the modules can be cranked closer together, so a warp could be sett closer to 80 epi, if I wanted to. (Not quite yet, I think...)

The behavior of hooks has been improved, so there are significantly fewer incidents of hooks getting stuck in either the down position or the up position. And some really aggravating squeals have been tamed. There are still a few little squeaks, but we'll just keep lubricating moving parts (of which there are an amazing number on this loom) until they quiet down.

The temple roller mounts have been replaced by mounts that allow for height adjustment, so the cradle the rollers rest in (with the cloth between cradle and roller) doesn't push the warp upward and distort the cloth.

The AVL folks learned some things; as engineers they deal with individual parts or subassemblies. It's not often that they work with fully assembled, working looms with almost all the possible bells and whistles in place. Mike, in particular, had never seen a loom with a warp on it, actually weaving cloth. He knows the hardware really well, but not what it does for a living :-)

There are still some hardware adjustments that need to be made, and probably another visit from the AVL team, but we're making progress.

4 comments:

Janet said...

It's great to know that AVL is making house calls to tweak the loom. Hope that all be working smoothly very soon. In the meantime, it's nice to see what you have accomplished.

neki desu said...

hip hip hurray for customer service!
i wonder if i bought a jacq would i have to fly them over here if problems arose. SHUDDER

Ruth said...

"Mike, in particular, had never seen a loom with a warp on it, actually weaving cloth. He knows the hardware really well, but not what it does for a living :-)"

This just takes my breath away. It seems to me that it should be required of all AVL employees that they at least observe all of their equipment doing what it's supposed to do (weave), and maybe they should all be required to weave on the looms--at least a few picks.

Deb Mc said...

I am SO glad you leave a reasonable distance from AVL so they can see a REAL warp and a REAL weaver using their equipment in REAL conditions with REAL expectations! Deb Mc