Actuation, monitoring and control of fabrics feeding during high-speed sewing

For some years now the fabrics feeding system of an industrial overlock sewing machine has been studied at the University of Minho, gathering different background researchers at the Laboratory of Process Research. Following the findings reported in previous stages, briefly summarised in this paper, a new research programme was established to enable a PC-based open and closed-loop control of the presser foot system. This paper highlights all this recent developments, presenting and discussing, in detail, the PID closed-loop control strategy implemented. The results show that the presser foot closed-loop control has improved performance for a wide speed variation range.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) – Project funding POSI/SRI/38944/2001