Statex Engineering, also from Coimbatore, is one of the leading names in the field of textile instrumentation and compact spinning. The company has recently introduced four new products, namely, ‘Veguam-2’ Fully Automatic High-Volume Instrument, ‘Carry Mic, ‘Carry Ginning Machine’ and ‘Moisture Meter with Mobile App.’ Statex has received its first bulk volume order from Cotton Corporation of India, Mumbai, for 290 Nos. Carry Ginning Machines and which are delivered in record time.
Mr. K. Subramaniam, Managing Director, Statex Engineering, goes into the details of his machines to The Textile Magazine. “Carry Mic is a new instrument, designed to measure the cotton fiber fineness in terms of micrograms per inch. We already have this facility in our laboratory, but the specialty of Carry Mic is that it can comfortably fit inside a suitcase. When people buy Kapas, they don’t know what the mic value is till ginning. However, with this instrument, they can remove the seeds and test the mic value then accordingly can fix the price on the spot.”
“In order to remove the seeds from the Kapas, we have developed a ginning machine with patented technology. While there are lot of ginning machines available, most of them weigh around 20-50 kg, 3 feet height and 2 feet width, occupying lot of space too, we have designed a portable one, which weighs just 7 kg. The principle on which the machine works is also different. While others work by forcefully removing the seeds, our machine works gently removing the seeds between the two rollers. This ensures that there is no damage to the fiber properties like length, mic, trash, etc. This also ensures that there is minimal wastage of fiber, which in turn means more during ginning process by comparing carry ginning fiber test result.
Explaining the salient features of the Moisture Meter with Mobile App, Mr. Subramaniam pointed out that: “As of now the usual practice in mills is that the top management would send someone to check bales and collect moisture readings, which would in turn be reported back to them. However, there are chances of mistakes happening this way. They may have for instance, measured the moisture at the wrong place in the bale. There are also chances of malpractice happening. With the Moisture Meter all these things can be avoided. The person testing the fiber can take a photo and send it, along with the readings, to any number of persons located anywhere in the world using social media platforms like WhatsApp. The top management therefore can see where the probe was inserted in the fiber sample and can rest assure that the correct readings are with them. It is as good as they themselves going to the spot and taking the readings.” Mr. Subramaniam added that with the Moisture Meter various report filtering options are possible, like date-wise, variety-wise and station-wise.
Going into the details regarding Veguam-2, Mr. Subramaniam said: “It is an advanced and reliable instrument for measuring 7 cotton parameters namely length, strength, micronaire, maturity, colour, trash and moisture. Veguam-2 is able to check all these parameters within 26 seconds”.
In the presence of officials from Cotton Corporation of India and the Central Institute for Research on Cotton Technology, the company had tested 80 samples, 40 each of two standard types of cotton, using Veguam-2, for which the time taken was 43.35 minutes, without any rejection of test sample it means 32 seconds/test. The theoretical time taken was 26 seconds per sample. However, there was some delay, because we need to take into consideration the extra seconds that the operators had to take to remove one sample after the test was done on that particular lot and then go to testing of another sample.
Mr. Subramaniam added that the company has incorporated three patents for Veguam-2, i.e., Patented circular comb movement for continuous testing, Patented double compression mechanism for measuring the actual maturity value of cotton, and Patented mechanism for length and strength testing module. “We have used advanced electronic PCB and sophisticated industrial grade computer which control the functions of the instrument,” he said.
Statex has also started exporting these new products to countries like Bangladesh, Turkey and Indonesia.