Claims:WE CLAIM:
1. A sliver weight measuring apparatus (31), Said apparatus (31) comprising of;
- a processing unit (32) comprising of a control unit (33), an electronic tag reader (34), a power supply unit (35), a summing unit (36) and a wireless communication device (38);
- plurality of load cells (37a, 37b, 37c and 37d) and said load cells are connected with the summing unit (36);
- a decoder device (41) mounted on said weight measuring apparatus (31);
wherein said weight measuring apparatus (31) is connected with the user interface device (82) through server (83) and transceiver (84) and the data processed in the controller (33) is transmitted to the transceiver (84) through wireless communication device (38).

2. The sliver weight measuring apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein, said weight measuring apparatus (31) is mounted on the floor in the delivery area of the spinning preparatory machines.

3. The sliver weight measuring apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein, said weight measuring apparatus (31) is mounted on the transport rail (52) of the automatic can transporting system (51).
4. The sliver weight measuring apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein, said weight measuring apparatus (31) consists plurality of load cells (37a, 37b, 37c, 37d), said load cells are connected with the control unit (33) through a summing unit (36).

5. The weight measuring apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein, said electronic tag reader (34), power supply battery (35), summing unit (36) and wireless communication device (38) are connected with the Control unit (33).

6. The sliver weight measuring apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein, each container (21) consists an electronic tag (42) such as RFID or NFC tag.

7. The weight measuring apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein, said weight measuring apparatus (31) is wirelessly connected to the server (83) through transceiver (84).

8. The weight measuring apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein, said User interface devices (82) are connected to the server (83), machine control unit (85) and with the weight measuring apparatus (31) mounted in the spinning preparatory department (1).
9. A method of working of sliver weight measuring apparatus, said method comprises the steps of;
- Placing the containers filled with fibre strand in the weight measuring apparatus (31) mounted in the department (1) and enabling the weight measuring process;
- measuring the weight of material stored in the container (21) using the load cells (37a, 37b, 37c and 37d) in the weight measuring apparatus (31) and transmitting the data to the control unit (33) through the summing unit (36);
- initiating the electronic tag reader (34) and decode the details stored in the electronic tag (42) provided in the Container (21) and transmits the data to the control unit (33);
- evaluating the quantity of material stored in the container (1) and converting the weight into kilograms using the control unit (33) and transmitting the evaluated data and the Tag data to the server (83) through transceiver (84);
- collecting the data from each weight measuring apparatus (31) and deriving the desired data using artificial Intelligence based web application software;
- transmitting the derived data to the user interface devices (82) and display the results;
- comparing the data collected from machine control unit (85) and generating warning signal in the user interface device (82) when the mass per unit length value is exceeded the standard limit.
, Description:FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to spinning industry. Particularly, the present invention relates to spinning preparatory department. Still particularly, the present invention provides a weight measuring apparatus for the containers and a method to measure the weight of each and every container in the spinning preparatory department using IoT based data communication system.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The spinning preparatory machines such as carding, lap formers, combing machines, draw frames and speed frames are involved in a process to remove the short fibres and impurities present in the raw cotton, parallelise and converting the fibres in the form of thin strand of fibres so called sliver or roving. The sliver materials are filled in the containers for a predetermined length for example 100 to 5000 metres. The container is preferably a ‘Can’. Once the predetermined length of material is reached, the filled Can is replaced by an empty Can either by manually or by using an automatic can changing system. The delivered containers with material are stored in a particular place and then fed into other machines for further processes.

Normally, various types of materials are processed with different raw materials, different fineness and density with various process parameters in an everyday operation of spinning mills. The raw material such as natural and synthetic fibres or in a combination of both used for yarn manufacturing. The natural raw material most commonly used in spinning mills is Cotton which has various changing phenomenon like colour, staple length, short fibre content fineness, strength etc,. The synthetic staple fibres such as Polyester and Viscose are most commonly used in spinning mills either individually, blended together or blended with cotton fibres. The process parameters such as linear density, short
fibre removal percentage and process speeds are varied depending upon the end product required. Therefore, in a spinning mill, different types of materials are processed in different machines at the same time.

The amount of fibre material stored in a container is depending on the size of the containers. The diameter and height of the Cans vary depending on the type of machines used in the department. Also, the weight of the fibre strand such as sliver varies depending on various parameters such as linear density and length of the sliver per Can. Apart from that, the sliver material stored in the containers are fed into further processing machines for processing as feed material. Therefore, the weight of the material stored in a container reduces gradually and exhausts over a period of time, for example one hour to two days.

Now a days, it is difficult to measure the weight of the materials processed in the entire spinning preparatory department. It is impossible to measure the weight of each and every container manually. Therefore, the floor managers use a manual random estimation method to measure the weight of the material which is not accurate. Also, it is important to maintain uniform mass per unit length of the fibre strand delivered from spinning preparatory machines. The fineness, uniformity of yarn is based on the weight per metre of the sliver material. So, production of sliver material with uniform mass per unit length and minimum coefficient of variation (CV%) is the major factor the spinning preparatory machines.

At present, the sliver weight is measured manually at frequent interval and cross checked with the standard parameters. If there is a deviation in the weight per unit length (Tex), it will be adjusted manually. This method is not accurate and there are many chances for weight variation. At present, no technology or systems are available to overcome the existing problem.

The prior art patent application 202041002935 filed by the Applicant in India on 22nd January 2020 discloses a weight measuring apparatus for spinning containers in India. Said prior art discloses a weight measuring apparatus for the containers and a method to measure and control the weight of each and every container in the spinning preparatory department using IoT based data communication system. The weight measuring apparatus is mounted in the container. Said apparatus consists a control unit and a weight measuring means. Said weight measuring apparatus is connected with the user interface device through server and transceiver. The quantity of material stored in each container is weighed and the data is transmitted to the server and displayed in the interface device. Said apparatus requires an inbuilt battery and said battery has to be recharged at a frequent interval which is creating a cumbersome while working.

The granted Indian patent 341872 filed by the Applicant of the present invention discloses an electronic process identification apparatus and method to process the same. Said process identification apparatus was mounted in the delivery zone of the spinning preparatory machines. The containers with transponders are decoded and encoded with process data and said containers are monitored by electronic receivers mounted in the creel zone of the spinning machines. The data from all control units and electronic receivers are sent to Internet of things enabled wireless communication system. Said invention collects all the process data except the weight of the material stored in the containers.

Therefore, the present invention is aimed to overcome the disadvantages present in the existing art. The present invention provides a weight measuring apparatus mounted in the floor area of spinning preparatory department and a wireless communication device is provided in the weight measuring apparatus to communicate the data to the user interface devices through IoT.

OBJECTIVE OF THE INVENTION
The main objective of the present invention is to provide a weight measuring apparatus to weigh the material stored in spinning container and a system to collect data about the quantity of material available in each container.

Other objective of the present invention is to provide an electronic weight measuring apparatus in the delivery area of spinning preparatory machines to measure the weight of material available in the container.

Yet another objective of the present invention is to provide an electronic tag in the spinning containers and a tag reader in the weight measuring apparatus to identify the Container and to read the details stored in the electronic tag.

Still another objective of the present invention is to provide an weight measuring apparatus in the Can traverse rail or traverse path to measure the weight during automatic can transportation.

Still another objective of the present invention is to provide a wireless communication device in the weight measuring scales mounted in the spinning preparatory department.

Still another objective of the present invention is to provide a cloud based data communication and storage system to collect and retrieve the data from each weight measuring apparatus.

According to the various objective of the present invention, the weighing scale is mounted preferably in the delivery area of the spinning preparatory machines

Still further objective of the present invention is to provide a system to collect the data from each container and the machine control units, evaluating the weight of material to find the mass per unit length, comparing the values with the standard values, transmitting the derived results to the user interface devices and to warn the user in case of any deviations in the mass per unit length in any containers produced from any machines.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The following presents a simplified summary of the invention in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the invention. This summary is not an extensive overview of the present invention. It is not intended to identify the key/critical elements of the invention or to delineate the scope of the invention. Its sole purpose is to present some concept of the invention in a simplified form as a prelude to a more detailed description of the invention presented later.

According to the main aspect of the present invention, at least a sliver weight measuring apparatus is provided in the spinning preparatory department especially to measure the weight of the containers. Said weight measuring apparatus comprising of a processing unit and said processing unit comprises of a control unit, an electronic tag reader, a power supply unit, a summing unit and a wireless communication device. Plurality of load cells are mounted in the weight measuring apparatus and said load cells are connected with the summing unit. Said weight measuring apparatus is connected with the user interface device through server and transceiver, and the data processed in the controller is transmitted to the transceiver through wireless communication device. The user interface devices are connected to the server, machine control unit and with the weight measuring apparatus mounted in the spinning preparatory department.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, said weight measuring apparatus is mounted on the floor in the delivery area of the spinning preparatory machines. Alternatively, said weight measuring apparatus shall also be mounted on the transport rail of the automatic can transporting system.

According to yet another embodiment of the present invention, a decoder device is mounted on the weight measuring apparatus. Each container in the spinning preparatory department consists of an electronic tag such as RFID or NFC tag.
According to the method of working of weight measuring apparatus for spinning preparatory department, said method comprises the following steps. The containers filled with fibre strand are placed in the weight measuring apparatus mounted in the department and the weight measuring device is enabled to measure the weight. The weight of material stored in the container is measured using the load cells mounted in the weight measuring apparatus and the data is transmitted to the control unit through the summing unit. Simultaneously, the electronic tag reader is initiated to read the details stored in the electronic tag provided in the Container and transmits the collected data to the control unit. Then the quantity of material stored in the container is evaluated and the weight is converted into kilograms using the control unit and the evaluated data and the Tag data is transmitted to the server through transceiver.

The data collected from each weight measuring apparatus are evaluated and the desired data is derived using the artificial intelligence based web application software. The derived data is then transmitted to the user interface devices and the results are displayed. The data collected from machine control unit and the actual data derived from the weight measurement system are compared and a warning signal is generated in the user interface device if the mass per unit length value is exceeded the standard limit.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAIWNGS
The invention will be better understood and objects other than those set forth above, will become apparent when consideration is given to the following detailed description thereof. Such description makes reference to the annexed drawings wherein:

Fig – 1 depicts a spinning preparatory department with various machines according to the existing art.

Fig – 2 depicts a Container/Can according to the existing art.

Fig – 3 depicts a weight measuring apparatus mounted in the spinning preparatory department according to the main embodiment of the present invention.

Fig – 4 depicts the block diagram of weight measuring apparatus according to the main embodiment of the present invention.

Fig – 5 depicts a weight measuring apparatus mounted in automatic can transport system in the spinning preparatory department according to another embodiment of the present invention.

Fig – 6 depicts a block diagram which describes the method of working of the weight measuring system according to the main aspect of the present invention.

Fig – 7 depicts a flow chart which describes the method of working of the weight measuring system according to the main aspect of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
The following description with reference to the accompanying drawings is provided to assist in a comprehensive understanding of exemplary embodiments of the invention as defined by the claims and their equivalents. It includes various specific details to assist in that understanding but these are to be regarded as merely exemplary. Accordingly, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that various changes and modifications of the embodiments described herein can be made without departing from the scope and sprit of the invention. In addition, descriptions of well-known functions and constructions are omitted for clarity and conciseness.

Fig - 1 describes the spinning preparatory machine sequence in accordance with the existing art. The raw material for example cotton is available in the form of bales. The bales are opened and the impurities like seed, leaf bits are removed in opening and cleaning machines at Blow room and the cleaned cotton fibres are sent to spinning preparatory department. The preparatory department consists Carding (1a), drawing (1b), lap forming (1c), combing (1d) and roving (1f) machines. The raw material such as cotton fibres fed into the carding (1a) machines are opened, cleaned, parallelized and converted into a rope form so called 'sliver' at the delivery zone (101) and stored into the containers (102). Plurality of carded slivers are fed into the drawing (1b) machines for parallelizing and blending. The delivered sliver is stored in the cans (202) through the delivery zone (201). The drawing cans are fed into the lap forming machines (1c). Plurality of drawing slivers are combined and formed as a lap (302) and wound on a spool. After a predetermined length is reached, the lap is replaced with an empty spool. The laps are fed into the combing machines (1d) and short fibres are removed by combing. The delivery zone (401) in the combing machines helps to store the combed sliver into the cans (402). In the draw frames (1e), at least 6 combed slivers are fed and converted as a single sliver. The delivery zone (501) in the drawing machines fills the sliver material into the cans (502) and the cans are supplied to roving machines. In roving machines (1f), the sliver material is thinned down and converted as Roving by applying twist on the fibre strand. The roving machines contain at least 120 spindles per machine. Said roving machines requires at least one sliver can per one spindle and the sliver cans (502) are placed at the back portion (601) of the roving frames. The roving material is wound as bobbins (602) at the front portion of the machine through the aid of flyers (603). Once the predetermined length of the bobbins is reached, it is replaced by the empty bobbins and the full bobbins are supplied to the spinning department for further process.

Fig – 2 describes a spinning Container which is used in the spinning preparatory process for material handling according to the existing art. The Container (21) is preferably a Can and said Can consists an outer body (22) which is preferably made up of polymer material. The upper portion (23) remains hollow and the bottom portion (24) is covered with a circular metal plate (25). Plurality of wheels (26’, 26’’) are mounted below the metal plate (25). A spring arrangement (27) is replaceably placed inside the Can (21). The fibre strand such as sliver materials are stored inside the containers.

Fig – 3 depicts a weight measuring apparatus (31) mounted in the spinning preparatory department according to the main embodiment of the present invention. At least one weight measuring apparatus (31a, 31b and 31c) is mounted in front of the delivery area of spinning preparatory machines such as Carding (1a), Combing (1d) and drawing (1b) machines. Alternatively, the weight measuring apparatus shall be mounted in any preferable area in the spinning preparatory department according to the floor plan and machine assembly.

Fig – 4 describes the weight measuring apparatus (31) according to the present invention. Said apparatus (31) consists of a processing unit (32) and said processing unit (32) comprises of a micro controller (33), an electronic tag reader (34), a power supply unit (35) and a summing unit (36). Plurality of load cells (37a, 37b, 37c and 37d) are mounted in the weight measuring apparatus (31) and said load cells are connected with the summing unit (36). Said processing unit (32) also consists a wireless communication device (38). The summing unit (36) is connected with the micro controller (33) and transmits the data received from the load cells to the micro controller. The data is processed in the controller (33) and transmitted to the server through wireless communication device (38).

Fig – 5 describes the functionality of weight measuring apparatus (31) according to another embodiment of the present invention. Currently, automatic can transporting system (51) is used in the spinning preparatory department to transport the containers from one machine to another machine. The weight measuring apparatus (31) is mounted in the floor area of the transport rail (52). An electronic tag decoder device (41) is mounted above the weighing scale (31). Each container (21) consists an electronic tag (42) and said tag is preferably a RFID tag. The details of the sliver material, machine and process details and the container details can be stored in the electronic tag (42). While measuring the weight, the apparatus (31) shall also collect the details stored in the tag (42) using the decoder device (41) and transmits to the server through the processing unit (32).

Fig – 6 depicts a block diagram which describes the method of working of the weight measuring system (31) according to the main aspect of the present invention. User interface device (82) are connected to the cloud storage (83) and the weight measuring apparatus (31) in the spinning preparatory department are connected to the cloud wirelessly through the transceiver (84).

Fig – 7 describes a flow chart to describe the method of working of the weight measuring system according to the main aspect of the present invention. When a container is placed over the weight measuring apparatus (31) mounted in the spinning preparatory department, the control unit (33) provided in the apparatus (31) initiate the weight measuring process. The weight of material stored in the container (21) is measured using the weight measuring load cells (37a, 37b, 37c and 37d). Once the weight is measured, the data is transmitted to the control unit (33) through the summing unit (36). At the same time, the electronic tag reader (34) is initiated to read the details stored in the electronic tag provided in the Container (21). The Electronic tag reader (34) reads the process details stored in the container tag (42) and transmits to the control unit (33). The quantity of material stored in the container is evaluated and the weight is converted into kilograms by the control unit (32). Then the data is transmitted to the server (83) through transceiver (84). The transmitted data collected from the weighing scale (31) are stored in the department server (83) and the desired data is derived using the web application software. The derived data is transmitted to the user interface device (82) to display the results. If the weight is exceeded than the standard limit, a warning signal is initiated in the user interface device (82). The corrective measures are processed by the artificial intelligence based algorithm and the rectification command shall be sent to the respective machine to control and maintain uniform mass per unit length of the delivered fibre strand in spinning preparatory machines.

According to the present invention, along with the mass of fibre strand, process details stored in the container tag are also collected by the apparatus. When the containers are delivered by the machines after filling the desired length of the sliver material, the weighing apparatus weighs each container and calculates the mass per unit length. This invention provides an IoT based weight measuring system which could overcome the disadvantages in the existing art and provides various advantages.