“Our concept is based on a system of simple, easy-to-understand, practical handling operations,” said said Oliver Krakow, senior manager in the Electrical Engineering R&D Department. “During the development process, we therefore concentrated, on one hand, on visualizing the processes, which were not consequently designed from a technical standpoint but on the basis of the machine’s operating sequences on site. The operator is helped by being guided through his daily jobs – from entry of the yarn into the machine to production of the final fabric. On the other hand, we looked at established user practices, i.e. at the types of hand movements and swiping features used on smartphones and tablets.”

 

The operating concept, with process-oriented main navigation systems, can be used via a modular arrangement and a uniform interface for the various types of machines. This applies to every area – from warp knitting, through warp preparation, to the production of technical textiles. For specific configurations, the contents of the production side can be adapted to the requirements of the user roles or machine features. To avoid any operator errors, monitoring algorithms have been integrated, and access is controlled via an RFID data chip with a specifically authorized access key in each case.

 

Interaction is also facilitated by functional, animation features. “When designing the screen changes, we avoided sudden jumps and went in for smooth transitions instead,” Krakow said.

 

Extending the functions to mobile devices complements the project. In this way, KAMCOS® 2 enables data to be accessed remotely by mobile devices using the KARL MAYER CONNECT app.

 

The command center

 

As well as the user interface with its exceptional design, KAMCOS® 2 provides all the performance features of a modern automation platform. All functions of modern textile machines can be fully integrated. This is based on the principles of an efficient, real-time data bus.

 

The integrated elements include the Laserstopp yarn monitoring system for the instant detection of yarn breakages and rapid machine stoppage, a newly developed camera monitoring system for inspecting the textile web and a new machine lighting system with status indicator for providing information on the operating status.

 

The next step

 

The development of KAMCOS® 2 was a high-priority, interdisciplinary project carried out by KARL MAYER. A large team of mechanical engineers, software developers and automation engineers from various business units and locations worked to present to the market the first machines equipped with this new automation platform in time for the ITMA trade fair.

 

These were the high-performance tricot machine HKS 2-SE and the new WEFTTRONIC® HKS weft-insertion machine. Following the successful premiere, the specialists still have plenty to do.

 

“The rollout of KAMCOS® 2 to all our tricot machines will begin on July 1,” said Krakow. “We also intend to extend the concept by additional functions that are applicable to our other machine ranges.”

 

“This award has made all our hard work and effort worthwhile, and will help us to communicate the advantages of KAMCOS® 2 to the market,” he added.

 

Source: KARL MAYER