A stop motion in a loom is an essential auxiliary mechanism that automatically stops the loom whenever a fault occurs in warp, weft, or other mechanisms during weaving. It is a series of safety mechanisms on a loom. Stop motions are used in the interest of quality and productivity; stopping the loom immediately in case of some problem. The purpose of stop motion is to maintain fabric quality, avoid production waste, and enhance weaving efficiency by halting the loom immediately upon yarn faults. There are two types of stop motion; warp stop motion and weft stop motion. The warp stop motion will stop the loom in case any warp yarn breaks, avoiding excessive damage to the warp threads. The weft stop motion stops the loom in the event of weft breakage or exhaustion of yarn in the weft package. In this article I will discuss about different types of weft stop motion.
What is Weft Stop Motion?
Weft stop motion is a crucial mechanism in weaving machines (both shuttle and shuttleless looms) that automatically stops the loom when a weft yarn breaks, runs out, or fails to insert properly during weaving. It is an auxiliary or tertiary motion on a weaving loom. Weft stop motions are vital safety and quality devices that detect weft thread anomalies through electronic or optical means and halt loom operation to prevent defects and wastage. Modern looms, especially shuttleless looms (air jet, rapier, projectile, water jet, etc.), use advanced weft stop motion devices to ensure quality and automation.
Types of Weft Stop Motion:
In modern looms mainly two types of weft stop motions are used
Piezoelectric electronic weft stop
The optical sensor weft stop motion
There is also more a weft stop motion named Opto-electronic weft-stop motion, which are described bottom of the article.
Piezoelectric electronic weft stop:
In the case of rapier and projectile loom, the mostly used device is provided with piezoelectric crystals. These crystals have a double quality: if an electric charge passes through them, they vibrate, or vice versa if they are made vibrate, they produce a light electric charge.
This second property is used for the weft insertion control. This device, if it detects a correctly inserted weft, produces a light electric charge. As this signal is too weak, it is first amplified and then controlled against a sample signal: if the signal corresponds, nothing happens.
Otherwise, the absence of the charge is interpreted as a broken weft and the weaving machine stops. At this point the automatic pick finding device enters into action and brings the machine back to the shed where the fault occurred. In this connection you must consider that, although the stop signal is given quite quickly, a certain technical time for stopping the loom is required. During this time, although the weft presenting device is standing, the loom moves forward with some strokes which are compensated recovering tension and space through the reverse running of the evener rollers.
The optical sensor weft stop motion:
In the case of fluid jet machines, it is preferable not to hinder the weft fly, therefore optical sensors are used which do not touch the weft. As already mentioned, in the case of the air-jet machines (at the moment only for them) there is a device which permits to restore automatically the broken weft and to start the loom. This mechanism permits to go on weaving if the problem takes place inside the shed. However, if defects take place in the pre-winding drum or between this and the cone, it is appropriate to have on board the machine the device which permits to select automatically the cone being processed. This system enables to bypass the pre-winding drum which has problems and to select a reserve drum which is standing until that moment. The machine does not need long stops and the operator can intervene easily to remedy the problem.
Figure 2: Optical weft stop sensor
Should the same fault take place again on the new pre-winding drum, this will be excluded in favor of the first drum.
The optical sensors are primarily infrared photocells suited to detect the presence of the thread or the quantity of thread accumulated in a prefixed zone.An example of these devices is the sensor for weft control on air jet weaving machine, which is briefly described in the following.
This device, which is designed to control the correct weft insertion into the shed of an air jet loom, has the task of stopping the machine in case of incorrect insertion.
The sensor is placed on the shaped reed at the desired height in the zone of weft arrival; it reads the presence of the thread when its front free end arrives in the sensor’s measuring range and crosses it. The two photo-elements are opposing as schematically indicated in Figure 2 and constitute an optical barrier which is disturbed by the weft thread when it is crossed by this thread.
Opto-electronic weft stop motion:
In the case of air jet machines for staple yarn weaving, an opto-electronic weft stops motion in twin arrangement can be delivered. While the first of the two weft stop motions serves as support for the machine control, the second one records the weft threads broken in the shed or expelled.
Figure 3: Opto-electronic weft stop motion
When the first one gets the weft, which means the weft thread has travelled the predetermined distance, the loom remains running. And in case of the second one gets the weft, which means the weft thread has broken and travelled excess than the predetermined distance, it knocks-off the loom instantly.
Conclusion:
Modern weft stop motion devices in looms play an essential role in maintaining fabric quality and enhancing weaving efficiency by detecting yarn breakages or exhaustion instantly and stopping the loom to prevent defects.
Founder & Editor of Textile Learner. He is a Textile Consultant, Blogger & Entrepreneur. Mr. Kiron is working as a textile consultant in several local and international companies. He is also a contributor of Wikipedia.
