Currently, textile industries use specialist machines for clothing manufacture. They sew small sections of garments, weave fabrics and cut material into the right shape. But until now, no machine was able to assemble a clothing item in its entirety. So, Seattle-based web developer Jonathan Zornow have created a sewing robot. This robot is also known as sewbo robot. This sewbo robot can sew together a complete item of clothing. It is also able to use a sewing machine and chemically stiffened pieces of material to create basic clothes. For example, T-shirts.
This sewbo robot is designed to create higher quality material in cheap cost.
Sewbo is consist of Universal Robot arm, a traditional sewing machine, and the reusable thermoplastic solution. It has an ultrasonic welder that sew two panels of material together with a hard texture. A water soluble chemical gives hard texture to clothing. Once the t-shirt put together all the robot needs to do is drop it into some hot water and it loosens up.
After that, Sewbo picks them up as one item and feed it into an industrial sewing machine. Means, it is similar to other industrial robots that work with materials like sheet metal.
Lauretta Roberts said “Key ingredient: polyvinyl alcohol. It is a non-toxic polymer that used inside the textile production process as a ‘sizing’. This process temporarily strengthens yarn during weaving.”
It takes almost half an hour to sew a shirt. Actual sewing is only a couple of minutes, but there’s a lot of measuring and adjusting going on in between steps.
Zornow expects manufacturers would use an assembly line of the machines. Each completes a small task before passing the item to the next robot. Sewbo manufacturing lines can be established within the countries where the clothes are going to be sold, reducing the environmental and social costs of large supply chains.
He is looking for the partnership with people in fashion industry.