Knitting technology, Third Edition

21.17.1
Automated seaming
The cost of manual handling and seaming, combined with the static price of the fin-
ished article, has encouraged the search for alternative methods of production in
the form of 
one-piece tights
knitted on the machine. However, at present, increas-
ingly automated tights seaming techniques have proved to be more successful.
Unfortunately, there are considerable problems involved in automatically picking-
up, orientating, guiding, handling, and sewing one of the lightest, flimsiest, most
extensible and unstable of knitted structures. It is therefore essential that the hose
legs are in a smooth, flat, undistorted state when they are removed from one oper-
ation and presented to the next. With the making-up operations being separate
modules serviced by robotic handling devices, it is possible to incorporate different
makes of machine as modules and to introduce and remove them as and when
required, without interfering with previous or subsequent modular operations.
Whereas previously the hose legs were presented to the automatic seaming 
operation by a skilled operative, the ‘
pick and place
’ system automatically picks-up
and ‘
double positions
’ the garment using two reference points on it [9].
The 
Detexomatic pick and place
system uses a pick-up probe involving suction
and gripping fingers to collect legs from a revolving basket. A second picker pre-
sents the leg to an orientation device, either toe-to-waistband or waistband-to-toe.
If it is the wrong way, it will be reversed.

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The manufacture of hosiery on small-diameter circular machines
271
On the 
Esox system
, vision detection is used to align the legs for automated tight
assembly by detecting and aligning a colour marker in the waist band and the six
wales of mesh that indicate the cutting line.