Posted May 18, 2016

 

By Devin Steele (DSteele@eTextileCommunications.com)

 

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Representatives of KARL MAYER North America called its recent in-house exhibition a huge success, with 271 people attending the two-and-a-half-day event.

 

A wide range of visitors from 82 companies and organizations attended machinery demonstrations, academic courses and lectures. Not only did they represent warp knitting, weaving, knitting and fiber production, but interested parties from such fields as composites, aerospace industry, consulting and education as well as from the military-related business also were on hand. The visitor share also included a number of brand manufacturers belonging to the sports, clothing and intimate sectors.

 

All told, attendees hailed from around the U.S., including as far away as Hawaii, and international visitors from Canada, Mexico and India also took part.

 

For the event, KARL MAYER partnered with three yarn suppliers – Unifi for REPREVE® polyester, Nilit for nylon and Invista for LYCRA® fiber.

 

“The demonstrated, innovative KARL MAYER machines generated tremendous interest and awe, especially the fabric-patterning possibilities on fully electronic warp knitting machines with Jacquard and certainly the seamless garment version of this technology,” said Tony Hooimeijer, president of KARL MAYER North America. “Having textile manufacturers, yarn partners and apparel brand representatives together led to lively, creative exchanges. This is of extreme importance – very noticeable in these exchanges is a strong interest by the brands to grow domestic manufacturing of their high-tech apparel products.”

 

The automatic sectional warper with advanced tension control units on the creel was an eye opener for visitors from the weaving industry, Hooimeijer added.

 

“There are many old warp preparation systems in use in North America,” he said. “Productivity and warp quality gains achievable with new technology excited all visitors, including those from the composites industry. Newly developed carbon fiber spreading technology demonstrated during the exhibition opens up new possibilities for a variety of forming technologies.”

 

Thirst for knowledge is high, Hooimeijer said, and KARL MAYER organized brief warp knitting familiarization courses. The six courses had an average participation of 30 students.

 

“Having such a large and diverse participation from the textile industry is very gratifying,” he said. “Plenty of networking took place during the days as well as during well-attended evening receptions and dinners.”

 

State-of-the-art machines for a market willing to invest

 

For the fabric production segment, KARL MAYER presented the HKS 4-M EL, the RDPJ 6/2 EL and the RSJ 5/1 EL. The exhibited machines belong to KARL MAYER’s current delivery program, but for many of the guests, they represented next-generation technology, according to Oliver Mathews, vice president of Sales and Marketing for KARL MAYER’s Warp Knitting unit.

 

“There is a great interest in new technologies,” he said.

 

The Warp Preparation business unit could also draw up a successful summary in terms of conversation quality and variety of visitors, the company reported. Clients did not just drop in to have a look at the machines but came armed with plenty of detailed questions, according to Dieter Gager, vice president of Sales for the Warp Preparation unit.

 

Many of the discussions focused on the displayed NOV-O-MATIC 1.000 equipped with the MULTITENS yarn tensioner system. The possibility to achieve high output with reduced manpower makes automatic machines especially interesting for replacement investments, because “a lot of fairly old, manual warpers are presently running in the USA,” said Gage who, in addition to the automatic warping machine, also presented the VSB PROSIZE® size box to visitors.

 

The Technical Textiles business unit used the exhibition to showcase its carbon fiber spreading unit UD 500 and to meet customers. Guests came with wide interests and very different questions, said Rainer Seuss, product manager for KARL MAYER Technische Textilien GmbH.

 

“Such compact events as this in-house exhibition give me the chance to have intensive discussions with our clients,” he said. “I always try to find out something about their activities, the latest trends and how we – as machinery manufacturers – can support them on the market,” Seuss said.