FIELD OF INVENTION

The present invention is related to Jacquard machine intended to handloom. Our designed programmable electronic jacquard machine useful for weaving complex designs in handloom sector. Basically our product provides the greater flexibility for changing the designs any time. This revolutionary technology could eventually replace the manual jacquard machine currently used in handloom sector.

BACKGROUND OF INVENTION

The jacquard handloom is a simple mechanical system for weaving designs on cloth or fabric, and it has a perforated cylinder on which the punched card sits. The design that will be printed on the fabric is reproduced onto graph paper. The design is then translated onto punched cards by a skilled worker. These punched cards are stitched together into a continuous belt, which is then supplied to the loom via a spinning drum. Holes in the punched cards direct the threads through hooks (rods) that must move up in order to weave the appropriate design. Lifting the rod would only raise the warp or vertical threads corresponding to the punched card holes. Unking many cards in this manner causes the pattern of holes to dictate which coloured threads must lift and which must not in order to weave the desired design. Because the cards form a closed loop, their rotation ensures that the pattern repeats itself without variation. A entire set of punched cards must be changed for each new design. Weavers must spend significant amounts of money on each new design and wait extended periods of time due to lack of skilled workers. As we all know, many weavers in our nation live below the poverty line and cannot afford to spend large sums of money on every design change. As a result, we created a low-cost programmable e-Jacquard machine. The designed device allows the user to change the design at any moment by replacing the previous design image with a new image.
CURRENT STATE OF THE ART

Many of our weavers use traditional handloom machines to produce sarees. The majority of weavers live in poverty or have recently crossed it, and their lifestyle is really miserable. Many weavers are moving on to other professions due to insufficient wages and increase in the cost of the raw materials. Weavers still continue to use ancient weaving techniques that take a long time to complete, which is one of the reasons the weaving sector is in decline. To create the design at the fabric's beginning, middle, and borders, weavers utilize mechanical jacquard machines. With a classic jacquard machine, the punched cards are the only source of design. Since it takes a lot of time and money to prepare punched cards in accordance with the specified design, it is impractical to make frequent changes. The weaver must lift the jacquard machine's hooks with their leg for each row of weaving (WEFT yarn). Many of them are experiencing knee and leg pain as a result of their heavy weight lifting through legs. Where as in power loom sector, electronic jacquard machines are used to weave designs on fabric. The electronic jacquard machine which are using in power loom sector are costly and consume huge power, and hence those machines are not directly suitable for using in handloom sector. JPH06322635, GB2186892, CN2396072, JP3102303B2, CN1112468C, and JPH03104957 are a few patented designs associated with the current concept. The common practises mentioned in the aforementioned references are

I. Designed for the textile/power loom industries.

II. A solenoid controls the warp-raising and -lowering mechanism (hook).

III. An electronic system operates the solenoid to control it (Computer)

From the foregoing, it is clear that the power loom and textile industries, where speed is crucial, are better suited for the current methods. A huge amount of power is necessary because of the solenoid system. Some of the industries that currently manufacture electronic jacquard machines are Dynamic Looms, Weavetech, Shreetex Engineers, Wovven Technologies, Prashanth Textile Engineers, GCS Technologies, Amar Jacquard, etc. The industries' electronic jacquard machines are useful for power looms, not manual looms, as was previously noted or in many other patented designs.

Because they take a lot of energy and are more expensive than the average weaver can afford, electronic jacquard machines now on the market are not directly suited for handlooms. Since 1976, a lot of advancements have been made with the textile or power loom industries in mind. From the above reasons, one can understand that there is a vital requirement for a simple, low cost and low power flexible electronic jacquard machine and suitable for existing hand loom machines. We carefully considered the issues faced by weavers before developing a Programmable electronic Jacquard machine for the handloom industry. With our novel idea, weavers can switched to our designed programmable electronic jacquard machine without much modifications. It offers flexibility to alter the design whenever you want without incurring additional cost or taking more time.

OBJECTIVES OF THE INVENTION

I. The main objective of the proposal is to develop Programmable Electronic Jacquard Machine with less expensive, low power consumption, and flexibility to change design at any time and suitable for handloom weaving machine.

II. To develop a programmable punched card which is scalable for 120, 240 and 512 hooks jacquard machines.

III. Programming of punched cards have been performed by DC motors through Microcontroller.

IV. To develop a user-friendly smartphone app (Android app) through which weavers can choose the design they want to weave on a saree.

V. To reduce the pressure on the legs of the weaver, metal strips (knifes of the jacquard machine) are pulled up by a heavy electric motor.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Commercially available Jacquard machines are quite compact and have been greatly optimised over many decades. As a result, the size of a punched card is also quite small. A punched card with 6 rows and 20 columns is typically 16*6 cm in size. Each punched hole is approximately 6mm in diameter. The distance between two punched holes is approximately 2mm. Whereas our newly designed punched card makes use of actuators (DC Motors) measuring 2cm X 2.2cm in length and width. To accommodate them, the size of the punched card must be significantly enlarged. The new punched card measures 60 cm* 40 cm. To accommodate this punched card, we require a new jacquard machine with proper dimensions.

Based on the design which we want to weave, the control circuit will open or close the holes on the punched card through DC motors. The complete control circuit has been designed as a box-like structure to allow for easy placement on the jacquard machine and to reduce the possibility of electrical component damage caused by the external environment. Our idea began with the development of a mobile app (Android app). The weavers will choose the design image from the mobile gallery using our specially created mobile app. Following the selection of an image, the mobile app will process the image using the mobile processor. The strong mobile processor will handle the majority of the complicated operations. It minimises the complexity of the punched card's control circuit. It lowers the system's cost because we don't need a high-end processor. After the mobile processor has completed the image processing operation, the binary image will be transmitted via Bluetooth to the punched card's control circuit. The jacquard machine’s punched card contains 120 DC actuators (DC motors) and a control circuit. The punched card's control circuit includes an Arduino Mega 2560 Development board and an ESP-32 with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules. The control circuit will save the processed images in built-in memory (binary image). The ESP-32 module serves as a point of interaction between the android smartphone and the jacquard machine’s punched card. The processed and optimised image file from the Android device is received through Bluetooth and stored in the control circuit’s internal memory. The Arduino board will read data from its internal memory and control the opening and shutting of the holes on the programmable punched card using the arms of the DC motors.

We designed the jacquard machine to run on the same principles as traditional jacquard machines and to be suited for fastening the planned punched card. The horizontal and vertical rods are arranged mechanically in a manner similar to traditional jacquard. We have a total of, 120 vertical and horizontal rods. Each horizontal rod is linked to a single vertical rod. Horizontal rods are moved forward or back depending on whether the.hole on the punched card is closed or open. The DC motors’ 3D printed arms are used to open and close the holes. The full set of rods controlled by electrical mechanisms is hoisted by a high-speed powerful motor. The weft is subsequently inserted, and the rods are returned to their former state.

DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

In the traditional jacquard machine, the warp yarn is directly connected to the rods of the conventional jacquard machine, and movement of the rods upward direction depends on the holes on the punched cards. We have designed programmed electronic Jacquard machine for complex designs in the handloom sector, which is a replacement for the manual handloom jacquard machine. The designed jacquard machine has 120 DC actuators (motors), depending on the design, the required threads are to be lifted and for this to happen their corresponding holes are to be opened in Jacquard punched card. This is done by turning ON the selected DC motors. The DC motors rotate forward direction to open the holes in jacquard, and rotate backward direction to close the holes. The DC motors rotation controlled by using Serial to Parallel Shift Register ICs. The output of these shift registers is used to turn on ULN2003 ICs which will allow the motors to rotate. After that all the holes are then closed by sending current in different direction using diodes. The entire control circuit has been designed in a printed circuit board (PCB). Each PCB has 5 serial to parallel converter 74HC595ICs connected in a cascaded fashion. The data input is first sent to the first IC and then the data is progressively shifted to reach the last IC. If two or more motors are turned ON at the same time, the max current would exceed and the IC would burn. To prevent this, we run only one motor at a time using one ULN2003 IC by software processing.

The Control circuit has two micro -controller boards used, they are ESP32 board from Espressif and Arduino Mega -2560 board from Arduino platform. ESP-32 receives file from Mobile phone (Android device) and stores it in its local memory storage (Flash Memory). But due to insufficiency of number of i/o pins on ESP32, there is a need for extra pins to be able to do entire tasks. The solution we adopted is to add an additional Micro-controller, i.e., an Arduino Mega. But Arduino Mega works at a voltage of 5V and ESP32 works at 3.3V. Due to this data cannot be directly exchanged between them. The data stored in ESP32 Flash storage is sent to Arduino Mega by l2C communication protocol. To address the incompatibility issue, we have used a bi-level logic shift converter. This allows 5V and 3.3V devices to communicate with each other. This logic level converter has 4 high speed bidirectional channels allowing quick and easy communication between various devices working at different voltages. It internally has a MOSFET configure to act in common source configuration with gate voltage being the lower voltage.

In the project, this microcontroller is used to programme the driver ICs on the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and to track the position and movement of the programmable punched card. A Stepper motor is used to move the programmable punched card forward and backward. The L298N driver IC controls the motor’s direction and speed. The L298N driver IC is a high voltage, high current dual full bridge circuit with TTL logic level inputs that is intended to drive inductive loads such as relays, solenoids, motors, and so on. The Driver IC includes two independent enable pins that can be used to disable the motors regardless of their inputs. This project’s module contains an L298N IC as well as an in-built 5V regulator IC that provides a regulated 5V output and up to 1A current. ,

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
Fig 1. Represents the process diagram of the current invention. Initially weaver select the design (image) from the mobile phone memory using a mobile app or by using mobile phone camera. Mobile phone processor process the selected image and corresponding binary image sent to ESP32 controller through Bluetooth. From the ESP32 internal memory, Arduino Mega processor read the binary image and controls the DC motors through Driver circuits and relays.
Figure 2 and Figure 3 shows the front and back view of the programmable punched card respectively. The punched card is assemble with the metal sheet with 120 dc motors are connected, these dc motors are having 3D printed shaft (arm) which is used for open or close the hole on metal sheet one can see in Fig 2. We arranged the 120 DC motor in 6 rows and 20 columns. For every motor right side holes are arranged for insertion of needles.These holes are programmed via motor arms.We used the driver circuit for the purpose of open or close the programmed holes. The dc motors are rotating both forward and backward direction.

Figure 4. shows that the control unit of the programmable punched card which is designed using EDA tool. In this 120 motors are connected to the 120 pins of micro controllers. In general, micro controllers have limited number of general purpose I/O pins. To mitigate this problem, we use the shift registers (Serial in Parallel out Registers) (74HC595 ICs). These registers are cascaded, we have designed a PCB which controlled 40 motors at a time. And each of 74HC595 IC it can have 8 outputs (parallel outs). So we have 5 ICs for each PCB. Motor has to turn ON for opening the hole. These data is to be shifted for corresponding values. After 40 shifts are over, the outputs of 74HC595 IC are connected to the ULN2003 IC. However, the ULN2003 IC has only 7 outputs for each IC. So we need atleast 6 ICs for 1 PCB. For easy routing we used only 5 74HC595 ICs and 6 ULN2003 ICs.

Figure 5 depicts the entire schematic of our invention, "Programmable Electronic Jacquard Machine with Programmable Punched Card." A jacquard machine is made up of Needles and Hooks. Its primary function is to lift the warp threads in accordance with the design and print the design on fabric. Controller closes or opens the holes on the programmable punched card based on the design. When a punched card comes into contact with a needle board, needles go through the open holes, and needles move back using spring holes when the hole is closed. With the help of the knife, the hooks corresponding to needles move upward. A Jacquard system is typically located above the loom and uses harness cord, hooks, and needles to control a large number of warp threads independently. A Jacquard hook represents a single heald or single thread lift for design.