Technology for a better textile industry
A previous EU research project known as Nu-Wave designed a prototype Retrofit Kit, an upgrade for knitting machines that generated significant interest at industry trade fairs. This upgrade showed reductions in both energy use and operation costs. To bring the Retrofit Kit to market, the EU-backed project MACH-TO (Industrial validation of Nu-Wave new generation of sustainable and efficient textile machinery and development of a strategy to enter the market), involving several small and medium-sized enterprises in the industry, set out to build a full-scale demonstrator of a Retrofit Kit, perform stress testing and develop a business model. The consortium designed and fitted a Retrofit Kit for two different knitting machines in textile factories. MACH-TO also completed a rigorous stress test on these machines. Cost and risk analyses of bringing the Retrofit Kit to market were also conducted and based on these, a preliminary business model was built. Overall, the Retrofit Kit will increase production speed by 20 %, reduce energy consumption by 80 % and expand the uses of knitting machines. The Retrofit Kit will now be brought to market by the MACH-TO partners, to help the struggling European textile industry. Improving textile machine performance may help the industry become more productive and competitive.
Keywords
Textile, knitting machine, Retrofit Kit, industrial validation, textile machinery
