A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System
Contents
1. integration of new subsystems from experienced providers we have in a relatively short period put together and commissioned a highly capable automated machine quilting system We look forward to the projects it can help us complete A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 26 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS would first like to acknowledge the support of the various vendors who contributed to the success of this process Their patience with my engineer s curious outlook has been much appreciated Why this What about that Did you know that if one tries to Well is that only true if 2 Why does the manual say What on earth were you thinking when you decided to e NewJoy Quilting Products Inc and especially H Bryan Newberry its president e Quilting Technologies and especially Tim Canan its president Lena Dalke sales and customer service and Melanie Hockenson and Druscilla Brock technical support e Diane and Jim Stutsman owners of The Sewing Room Frisco Texas through which the NewJoy products were ordered and delivered e Tran Computers Dallas Texas and especially its owner Kim Do Not my real name it Vietnamese and too complicated This sound more Korean don t you think who provided the nicely refurbished Dell laptop computer The inspiration for this project was my bride Carla who said after seeing a friend s new mid arm system non automated wonder if we should get a mi2. Inc of Glendale Arizona This is a well made all aluminum frame suitable for use with heads having a throat depth of up to perhaps 9 As our sewing head we acquired a Juki TL 98E commercial sewing machine with a nominal throat depth of 9 This is a machine that might be used in a tailor shop Among its other features this machine has an electric thread cutter which will cut both threads at the end of a sewing pass and retain the end of the bobbin thread so that another sewing pass can be started without need for any further attention to the thread A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 5 We assembled the system and shortly made some small improvements We placed a control button for the thread cutter on the carriage handlebar We also added a presser foot interlock switch This prevents starting the head motor if the presser foot has not been lowered Doing this would inevitably and immediately result in a dreadful thread tangle Most modern domestic sewing machines include this feature but commercial machines generally don t as tailors and the like are supposed to have enough skill to avoid the problem Figure 1 shows this system Figure 1 NewJoy Gold Standard frame and Juki TL 98E head This system served us well and Carla completed about 40 quilts on it over the years However because of the limited head stroke and thus the limited width of one pattern swath the task of qu
3. shown in its entirety would result in the system sewing a 5 x 5 square in a counterclockwise direction beginning at its near left corner 00 05 55 50 00 The lower left corner of the square represented by the first point entry would be located at the initial carriage position Because of the relative nature of the coordinate system the following file would generate the same stitched pattern in the same place assuming identical initial carriage locations 13 18 68 6 3 13 A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 28 However there is a potential significance to the difference between the two because when the basic pattern is modified under control of specialized commands placed in the pattern file or entered by the user on the control panel in preparation for execution certain transformations are made with respect to the origin 0 0 and hence their impact varies with the location of the origin with respect to the pattern figure Discontinuous patterns In some cases it is not appropriate or practical to have continuous stitching for the entire pattern In that case an interruption to movement of the head along the path can be made allowing the user to cut the thread hopefully by just punching a button and then having the system automatically move the carriage to the proper place to resume stitching Locations where this should occur are signalized with the Jump command in the file For
4. 2 Magic frame rail with tracks carriers and wheels The carriage has at both the front and rear ends that is at each frame rail a pair of wheel carriers gray finish in the picture each of which carries a pair of grooved nylon wheels mounted on ball bearings The hangers reach into the rails through the open bottoms of the two sides so that all four wheels ride on the top surfaces of the tracks A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 11 After some study we concluded that the best approach to adaptation would be to mount the two pairs of standard wheel hangers on the ends of an adapter plate with a dropped center The PCQ carriage would then sit into that dropped center resting essentially on the edges of the two flanges on the carriage which in the default configuration of the carriage carry its X direction wheels A related design issue was the positioning of the PCQ carriage along the length of the adapter plate This had to be resolved with reference to the issue of matching e The possible Y direction travel of the head on the PCO carriage as limited by the upper carriage wheel and drive arrangements and e The possible Y direction travel of the head considering the location of the takeup spindle the travel is limited where the throat rear or the needle bar at the front would strike the loaded takeup roller We wanted to have the excess of the former travel over the latter approximately equally divide
5. Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 20 This scheme does require more overall depth of the machine frame It is not really practical for example on the NewJoy Gold Standard frame we previously used Batting options Under either threading scheme there are several options for the placement of the batting supply e t can be wound onto a supply spindle carried on the frame near the spindles for the top and back e A mill roll of batting on a fiber core can be placed on a spindle just used as an axle mounted near the bottom of the frame e It can be piled on the floor beneath the frame or on a shelf installed there THE PINNING SHELF The top and back fabric panels are attached to their respective supply spindles by being pinned to short muslin leaders which are in turn attached to the spindles themselves with Velcro Similarly the leading edge of the completed sandwich is attached to the takeup spindle by being pinned to a short muslin leader there Sometimes the supply spindles are loaded with their fabric panels on a floor we call it loft loading In that situation it is easy to pin the fabric to the leader since both lie nicely on the floor But in many cases it is more practical to wind the fabric onto the spindles with them in place on the machine For one thing on the new machine the spindles are very heavy and as well are 10 long so maneuvering them between the loft a
6. be used to assemble a frame 24 wider The X direction toothed belt In figure 8 we saw the X axis toothed belt which engages a sprocket on the X axis stepping motor with two idler pulleys to provide good contact The belt is attached to the two end frame boxes of the frame via square U bolts These are held with prevailing vibration resisting nuts allowing adjustment of the belt tension The arrangement is shown in detail in figure 9 The belt is bent back over the U bolt so that the teeth on the facing sides interlock providing a strong stable loop The loop is held closed A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 17 with glass fiber strapping tape The teeth on the portion of the belt that actually contacts the U bolt are cut off to make a better fit Figure 9 X direction toothed belt attachment Power and cable management Three items on the carriage require AC power the PCQ controller and carriage drive via a cord ended power unit the touchscreen control panel via a wall brick power unit and the sewing head itself To rationalize the umbilical situation for the carriage we installed a small power strip provided incidentally by Quilting technologies as part of the PCQ product package on the carriage Its cord lengthened from the inexplicably short one the strip came with is the sole AC umbilical to the carriage The arrangement is seen in figure 10 Figure 10 Carriage AC power distri
7. construction More commonly the top is pieced composed of numerous small pieces of cloth of various colors or patterns sewn together A complex pieced top may comprise several thousand individual pieces The piecing may either be done by hand stitching or with a sewing machine Sometimes embroidery or appliqu work is included on either a whole cloth or pieced top The back is ordinarily of whole cloth construction although rarely a pieced back is used as well Copyright 2008 Douglas A Kerr May be reproduced and or distributed but only intact including this notice Brief excerpts may be reproduced with credit A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 2 The quilt is usually held together by one of two techniques The quilt may be tied held together in numerous places with lengths of thread cord yarn or ribbon passing through the quilt and tied usually with the free ends extending for decorative effect e The quilt may be quilted held together by through stitching usually in a decorative pattern extending across its entire surface Thus we encounter the dual usage of the word quilting both a meaning the overall process of making a quilt and b meaning the stitching used to hold the quilt together and the process of applying it The quilting process is a major component of the overall artistic content of a completed quilt Quilting can be performed in several ways e By hand with
8. members Mid arm sewing heads Various sewing heads in the mid arm range throat depth of perhaps 15 17 are available Some have been designed specifically for this purpose There are also shops that specialize in taking a domestic or commercial sewing machine and stretching it to a larger throat depth This involves cutting through the casting that comprises the upper arm and machine bed that entire component is sometimes spoken of as the harp of the machine and inserting custom made extension sections The various shafts rocker arms and the like that pass through the arm and the bed to the needle end mechanisms are then also extended by cutting through them and welding in extension sections The feed dogs of the machine are not used in machine quilting applications and so often they and the various shafts and arms that drive them are just jettisoned OUR EARLIER SYSTEM In 2003 my wife Carla returned to quiltmaking a craft she had enjoyed earlier in her life She decided to make quilts for all of our children grandchildren and great grandchildren She designed and pieced her first quilt and had it quilted by an artisan at a local quilt shop But we soon decided that we would rather be self contained in that regard so we began looking into machine quilting systems After considerable research we decided to base our system on a NewJoy Gold Standard machine quilting frame made by NewJoy Quilting Products
9. the quilt in the lap of the artisan on a table or held by a quilting frame e On a conventional sewing machine This is only practical for small quilts since to stitch in the interior of the quilt a substantial amount of the surrounding fabric needs to be rolled up or folded within the throat of the sewing machine e On a quilting machine on which a sewing machine often called here a sewing head and often of a special design moves across the quilt on a bidirectional carriage We will discuss this mode in detail in the section to follow The quilting machine A quilting machine comprises two major portions the quilting machine frame and the sewing head The three fabric layers of the quilt the top back and batting are each rolled up on a long tubular spindle The spindles are mounted across the front of the frame A fourth spindle on which the completed quilt will be progressively wound is mounted toward the rear The sewing head is on a bidirectional carriage which can move across the entire width of the quilt on the frame and as well from front to rear over a modest distance The takeup spindle is within the throat opening of the head non 1 Often called rollers tubes or poles 2 Sometimes the batting is just piled on the floor or on a shelf under the frame or pulled from a mill roll on an axle under the frame A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 3 The head
10. to move to coordinates O O in our example the desired location for the lower left corner of this pass 6 inches below the initial point The head would then be started and the carriage would commence its movement over the pattern Pattern modification The PCO system allows the user to start with a pattern defined by a file and make many kinds of modifications or adaptations to it These include Scaling it in the X and or Y directions Replicating the pattern in the X or Y direction but not both For replication in the X direction a controllable blank space can be included between the instances Rotating the pattern through an arbitrary angle Note 1 Flipping the pattern about the X or Y axis or both Note 1 e Adding mirrored instances of the pattern about either axis or both Note 1 Making multiple radial instances of the pattern e g turning a petal into a flower Note 1 Offsetting the pattern along the X axis essentially starting at some point along its width and adding the omitted portion back in at the far end Note 2 Skewing the pattern by shifting the right and or left sides of its bounding box up or down or shifting its top and or bottom edges to the right or the left or both A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 30 e Trimming a defined portion off the top bottom left or right edge of the pattern Note 2 Note 1 These op
11. A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Douglas A Kerr Issue 1 1 October 23 2008 ABSTRACT A quilt is a fabric item often in the form of a bed covering with two fabric layers between which is a layer of insulating batting In one style the three layers are held together by a pattern of continuous stitching a process known as quilting This may be efficiently applied by a quilting machine in which a sewing machine sewing head travels on a bidirectional carriage system over a portion of the entire quilt In an automated machine quilting system the sewing head is driven by a computer controlled servo system so as to automatically execute the desired pattern In this article we describe a modern automated machine quilting system utilizing a newly introduced sewing head and a mature commercially available PC based computer control system BACKGROUND Quilts A quilt is a fabric item often intended for use as a bed covering but which we may often find used as a lap robe or even as a decorative wall hanging A quilt comprises two fabric layers the top and the back between which is sandwiched a layer of insulated batting typically cotton polyester or wool or a blend of these The top is ordinarily decorative It may be made of a single piece or only a few joined pieces if needed to provide the desired width or to implement a border of printed or dyed fabric spoken of as whole cloth
12. both with some considerable flexibility as to the details The in the well scheme Figure 12 illustrates schematically the scheme described as in the well It is characterized by the fact that the three layer fabric A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 19 sandwich emerges from the bottom of the uppermost supply spindle which in this scheme carries the quilt top fabric Alternate takeup tube positions Quilt top good side in Takeup o O pin Quilt back good side in No tube here alternate location __ for batting Figure 12 In the well loading scheme The over the top scheme Figure 13 illustrates the scheme described as over the top It is characterized by the fact that the three layer sandwich emerges over the top of the uppermost supply spindle which in this scheme carries the quilt back fabric Takeup No tube here peng Alternate takeup tube positions N o 9 O Pin Quilt back good side in Quilt top good side in g upper batting bar bracket position Figure 13 Over the top loading scheme Here the greater arc of contact of the complete three layer sandwich with the final spindle across which it travels provides a more stable mating of the sandwich In addition this scheme gives the operator greater visibility of the stitching process A
13. bution strip A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 18 The touchscreen panel came from the factory with a single very long umbilical a single sheath of a very nice springy fabric loom through which ran both a long DC power cable to its wall brick and a USB cable to go to the host computer In our case the power brick plugs into the power strip on the carriage so the DC cable was stripped out of the loom sheath We used the freed space in the sheath to carry the USB cable from the PCB controller Thus we now have only two umbilicals to the carriage a single AC power cord and the dual USB cable Figure 11 Cord tender We didn t care to shorten the DC cable to the touchscreen unit the coaxial power connectors used are difficult to work with We also had excess length in the AC power cords to the head and the PCO carriage power supply now located in the carriage To manage all this excess cordage mounted a small plastic tackle box with a latching lid upside down on the bottom of the carriage adapter plate partially hidden from view by the stiffening ribs Each compartment of it harbors the excess of one of the cords entering through notches cut in the end walls Clear package tape is used to hold the cord hanks in place until the lid can be shut Figure 11 shows this cord tender LOADING SCHEMES Two different loading schemes are used by machine quilting enthusiasts The NewJoy Magic frame accommodates
14. d arm system maybe one with computer control She bore with me though the many hours of engineering subsystem selection procurement negotiations shipment tracking construction assembly adjustment and testing and allowed her kitchen to be a carriage laboratory for several weeks And of course special thanks to her for her careful copy editing of this article A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 27 APPENDIX A PCO Pattern Files The pattern file The patterns to be worked through the PCQ system are described in pattern files They describe the path of the figure in terms of discrete points The PCO software reads this path description and fits a curve to it and then gives incremental instructions to the carriage stepping motors to follow that curve with a resolution of about 0 01 about 0 005 in one mode Basic syntax Pattern files for use by the PCQ system are ASCII files using a very straightforward syntax The principal statement describes a point on the pattern path in terms of X and Y coordinates expressed in signed decimal notation to a precision of up to 3 decimal places The values are placed in the order X Y with just a space between them For basic operation the origin 0 0 is arbitrary The first point is always executed at the physical location of the carriage when execution begins and all other points are placed relative to the coordinates of that initial point Thus this file
15. d between the two ends of travel Attaining this required the PCQ carriage to be located on the adapter plate in such a location that there would be interference between the rearmost extensions of the PCQ carriage side frame and the actual frame rails Fortunately there was nothing much to prevent notching the carriage side frame to get the necessary clearance There was some question as to how the adapter plate should be given the necessary flexural stiffness A design with side flanges would have been ideal but would have been costly to fabricate on a one off basis Instead we chose to have the plate made of relatively large gauge steel plate 10 gauge nominally 0 1345 thick and then to augment its stiffness over its long central span with aluminum angle ribs underneath After the design was completed a local machine shop made the plate itself for us quickly shearing the material with a really big shear well it s not as big as it seems the blade has a nick in it about two feet from the right end and forming it with a really big press brake We then drilled all the necessary holes added the stiffeners made some mounting brackets to hold the PCQ carriage in place notched the carriage as discussed above and put the whole works together Sounds really simple doesn t it Figure 3 shows the adapter plate itself with the original wheel carriers attached The stiffening ribs are not in place here A Modern A
16. e are two basic physical configurations In one the basic family the servo controlled carriage that is the heart of the system replaces the normal carriage on the machine quilting frame to be used A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 7 In another the side mount model used especially in long arm systems the existing carriage is retained and the PCQ system works through an auxiliary servo controlled carriage mounted alongside the main carriage and mechanically coupled to it The basic PCQ carriage comprises a lower carriage and an upper carriage The upper carriage moves in the fore and aft direction the Y axis on ball bearing steel wheels running on rails on the lower carriage It is driven by a stepping motor working through a toothed belt attached to the upper carriage The lower carriage is moved left to right the X axis along the rails of the machine quilting frame and thus must be adapted to the frame construction involved Again drive in this direction is by way of a stepping motor operating on a toothed belt extending the full width of the frame The PCQ carriage out of the box has a set of ball bearing X axis wheels at a fixed spacing In some machine quilting frames the left to right travel is along simple rails reminiscent to those on which a sliding patio door runs fastened to a tabletop perhaps a folding banquet table with clamps Sometimes even carpenter s clamps how agricu
17. e quilting can be followed The artisan may just do it freehand following the sewing on the finished quilt The sewing head and carriage are ordinarily equipped with handlebars for controlling the motion In some cases the artisan may mark the pattern on the face of the quilt top using chalk or a marking pen whose marks can be washed away Often the quilting machine will have a long shelf on which a full scale paper pattern is placed An arm connected to the head or carriage carries a stylus a transparent cursor or a laser pointer The artisan guides the head so this pointer follows a line on the pattern This is sometimes called pantograph work the term referring to the overhead arm used to support the pointer Sometimes the pattern shelf is above the head This allows the artisan to work from the front side of the machine In other cases the shelf is placed at the rear of the frame at desktop level This requires the artisan to conduct the quilting work from the rear of the machine and of course requires that there be sufficient space behind it to do so A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 4 This is generally considered a less convenient arrangement than the overhead pattern shelf Machine quilting frames There is a wide variety of designs used for machine quilting frames A number of frames are made of plywood Others are made of aluminum while some of the larger frames have steel
18. ed by a table in the initialization file The fastest practical attainable speed is 2 25 in sec Our system is programmed for this as its top available speed In practice considerations of head and carriage dynamics suggest that a nominal speed of perhaps 1 25 in sec is about the fastest that should be used In operation the same speed occurs regardless of the instantaneous track direction the velocity vector has a constant magnitude resulting in a consistent stitch length for any given stitching rate by the head PC Quilter flexibility As a result of its long history of adaptation to many different system configurations and for use by artisans with a wide range of needs the PCO system is extraordinarily flexible Some might call it nerd oriented and in fact when one places an order for the system one must undergo a brief computer literacy evaluation by the Quilting Technologies technical support desk A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 9 Many system parameters are set by entries in an initialization file and all are discussed in considerable detail in the system documentation PC QUILTER OPERATION PC Quilter user interface In its earliest manifestation 2001 although the PC Quilter software operated under Windows it was operated by the user from the host computer via a DOS like character mode serial interactive dialog sometimes called a console interface by reference to early computer conso
19. erations require that the origin of the pattern coordinate system be appropriately located with respect to the figure Note 2 These operations will usually result in a bunch of loose ends of the pattern line at the new boundary the program will connect these together in the best way possible to allow the pattern to be stitched on a continuous line basis These modifications can embedded as commands in the pattern file itself so that they will be applied whenever that file is loaded or they can be entered during a session by the user on the control panel in which case they will be applied on the fly during the session In the latter case the user can call for a new pattern file to be written in which commands describing the modifications will be embedded If there are pattern modification commands embedded in the pattern file as loaded the user may modify their parameters or suppress them from the control panel for this session Pattern file creation and editing Pattern files are often generated by special software operating from a graphic image of the desired figure either drawn with a computer based drawing system perhaps even a CAD system or scanned from a hand drawing or in image from a publication The result of this digitization often requisite or deserves some further adjustment to optimize the pattern description suppress undesirable artifacts of digitization and so forth Many pattern d
20. example this file would sew two concentric squares 2 2 2 2 22 2 2 2 2 jump 1 25 1 25 1 25 1 25 1 25 1 25 1 25 1 25 1 25 1 25 Here for symmetry arbitrarily use the center of the two squares as the numerical origin O O Nevertheless as always the first point whose coordinates will be considered to be 2 2 will still be at the initial physical position of the carriage Controlling the initial position relative to a benchmark We may want to locate each pass with respect to some point on the previous pass or to some feature on the quilt top such as a boundary between blocks We can easily do that by means of an initial jump called for historical reasons a courtesy jump in the PCO literature Suppose we wanted the single 5 x5 square pattern we saw earlier to be executed such that the lower left corner of the pattern the first point of the pattern fell exactly 6 inches below the corresponding corner of the pattern just sewn Then we would use this file A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 29 06 jump 00 05 55 50 00 We would place the sewing point needle cursor on the lower left corner of the previous pattern and execute the file The first statement in effect defines that initial physical location of the carriage as having coordinates O 6 However the jump command immediately following tells the system to not start sewing at that point but rather
21. from the top Figure 16 Shelf in position for pinning the top In figure 17 we see the setup for pinning the top fabric a colorful dish towel is used as a stand in for the top panel The good side of the fabric is oriented as shown uppermost it will wind toward the spindle Figure 17 Pinning the top Auxiliary support blocks are put in place figure 18 to support the shelf at the higher altitude needed for pinning the back fabric panel carried by the uppermost spindle They have integral dowel pins that go into the holes in the shelf supports that can be seen in figure 15 A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 23 Figure 18 Support with auxiliary block in place In figure 19 we see the shelf in place for pinning the back fabric panel Figure 19 Shelf in position for pinning the back In figure 20 we see the setup for pinning the back fabric Here the good side of the fabric would actually be downward again it will wind toward the spindle in the photo the good side is up for best visual effect A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 24 Figure 20 Pinning the back For pinning the fabric sandwich to the takeup spindle leader the shelf is placed in a third position figure 21 The auxiliary block is not used at this time but is shown in place Depending on the fabric widths involved the left support may be moved inboard of the carriage so the carriage can be moved fully to t
22. he left clearing the working zone For the back and top pinning it may not be possible to have the support so far inboard as the fabric needs to be brought over the rear of the shelf But for those operations it is not obtrusive for the carriage to be parked within the fabric width Figure 21 Shelf in position for pinning sandwich A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 25 In figure 22 we see the setup for pinning the sandwich to the takeup leader Figure 22 Pinning sandwich to takeup leader FREE MOTION OPERATION With the drive to the carriage stepping motors inactive carriage unlocked state the carriage can be moved fairly easily by hand There is some drag from the friction of the toothed belts over their sprockets and the motors impose a subtle detenting at a spatial frequency of about 89 ticks per inch This notwithstanding it is perfectly practical to engage in limited free motion quilting as might be needed to join together automatically worked pattern sections or to repair lapses in the automated stitching caused by technical mishaps But the behavior isn t really suited for extensive free motion work sewing a whole quilt under hand control from a pantograph pattern for example In any case Carla has no intent to engage again in extensive free motion work Accordingly we have not installed the pattern shelf on the frame CONCLUSION By straightforward
23. he right handgrip is used to manually start or stop the sewing head motor The black push button atop the left handgrip is used to force the needle to go to the down or up position when not sewing The position in which it is when sewing starts is the position to which it will return when sewing stops We have calibration tables that relate this to actual stitch temporal frequency stitches sec A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 15 Figure 7 Carriage cockpit The small toggle switch seen on the handlebar frame to the left of the right handgrip is the relocated PCQ pause switch When moved to the right the PCQ system stops the head motor and stops carriage motion When the switch is returned to the normal position the user receives a menu offering various things one might want to do including e Resume sewing the pattern e Abort the run e Cause the carriage to slowly move forward or backward along the pattern path with no sewing handy when recovering from various incidents The right knob sets the head sewing speed An arbitrary digital indication of the set speed appears on the display panel The left knob is reserved for an optional feature not used in this installation generically called stitch regulation Select A Stitch for the NewJoy implementation It is for use in freehand quilting and accommodates the fact that the artisan may not move the carriage at a constant speed while tra
24. igitization software packages provide special features for this File descriptions may also be edited neonatally or later by a user with any handy text editor Of course it is not always simple to know how to turn a desired change in the shape of the figure into a modification of the set of points that describe it In fact the PCQ software suite in its graphic user interface form includes a text editor for this purpose although it can be disabled in the system Preferences settings It is often used to insert delete or amend embedded pattern modification commands or to make minor changes in point coordinates A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 31 Virtual execution A pattern file that has been loaded subject to any modifications that are in effect may be actually executed causing the resulting pattern to be stitched Alternatively the user may invoke the Draw mode in which a virtual execution is done At the completion of this virtual execution the user is invited to see a graphic plot of what the stitching would have been in order to be certain that the desired result will be obtained when the pattern is actually executed Result files After either an actual or a virtual Draw execution two result files are written The first in BMP form is the graphic presentation of the executed path Each pixel of this image corresponds to an instantaneous carriage position and the pixel p
25. ilting was rather tedious and Carla s objective was not just to spend time rather it was to design and make quilts So we decided to look into a system with a mid arm head and a fully automatic pattern sewing capability Thus began the adventure this article reports It took us through art science mechanical electrical and software engineering laboratory and machine shop work and many other disciplines 3 The button on the head itself is on the side toward the handwheel end not handy to reach during quilting operation When using the machine for normal sewing there is also a foot pedal for the thread cutter adjacent to the foot speed control but of course this was of no use in the machine quilting situation A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 6 THE NEW SYSTEM Introduction After considerable research we decided to assemble a machine quilting system from these subsystems e Frame The frame is a Magic frame made by NewJoy Quilting Products Inc introduced in 2007 This frame is suitable for work with heads having throat depths up to perhaps 18 and can be assembled to an overall spindle width of 12 It is of heavy duty aluminum construction and provides for an overhead pattern shelf or a gallery shelf at table level behind if that is for some reason preferred e Sewing head The sewing head is a Crystal Quilter head made by NewJoy introduced in spring of 2008 This head has a th
26. is guided either manually or automatically to stitch a swath of the pattern extending across the width of the quilt When one swath is finished some of the completed portion of the quilt is rolled onto the takeup spindle drawing additional fabric from the three supply spindles The movement of the head in the fore and aft direction is limited by the presence of the takeup spindle with its roll of completed quilt within the throat of the head As the process nears its end the roll of completed quilt may attain a diameter of 4 or greater For a sewing head with a nominal throat depth of 9 typical of even larger size domestic sewing machines often used as sewing heads the motion may be limited to perhaps 3 1 2 Thus each swath can only embrace perhaps 3 1 2 of pattern This essentially precludes the use of patterns with large motifs To mitigate this limitation it is desirable to use sewing heads with greater throat depths Some industrial sewing machines are employed as well as special sewing heads specifically designed or adapted for machine quilting use These having a throat depth of perhaps 18 or greater are called long arm machines Throat depths up to 30 can be found in this class Recently there is increasing use of so called mid arm sewing heads whose throat depth is in the range of perhaps 15 17 Following the pattern There are a number of ways in which the pattern for th
27. itch corresponds to thee carriage position increment The second is a new pattern file in standard syntax in which all modification commands have already been applied This file thus contains no modification commands but is rather a collection of points that if executed will directly produce the complete modified pattern result It is reminiscent of a machine language listing of an assembled program with macros expanded and relative addresses resolved Layout assistance The PCO software package includes a capability called Math Help that will assist the user in such tasks as fitting pattern figures to the available space on the quilt For example the user may have a pattern module that in native form has a width of 10 000 and is set up so that multiple instances can be seamlessly joined to make a wider figure Perhaps the desired width of the entire pattern is 95 300 The user can present Math Help with this problem The program will suggest that the user choose between e Having 9 instances of the figure joined each scaled to 105 88889 of its native size 10 588889 wide or e Having 10 instances of the figure joined each scaled to 95 3 of its native size 9 53 wide After the user makes a choice and confirms that this is the plan to be followed the program adopts the appropriate number of instances and scaling factor for the session and applies them during execution A Modern Automated Machine Qui
28. les in which the operator interacted via a keyboard and a printer This is described in the PCO literature as the command line interface CLI form of control That term is however inappropriate for this mode The motivation for this in 2001 seemingly primitive user interface was to permit operation on PCs of very limited processor capacity which could be acquired used at low cost during that time period In 2004 Quilting Technologies introduced a graphic user interface GUI front end for the system This has a bona fide Windows user interface and behind the scene feeds instructions to the underlying PCQ operating program Its top level portion is called QTMenu In 2007 Quilting Technologies introduced a color touchscreen control panel for the system It can be for example mounted on the sewing head It operates with its own front end software and like the graphic user interface package feeds commands behind the scene to the underlying PCQ program There are however some subtleties of pattern modification and manipulation that cannot readily be done from the touchscreen in its present version so even if it is installed some preparatory work may need to be done at the computer The PC Quilter pattern language Pattern files for use by the PCQ system are ASCII files using a very straightforward syntax The principal statement describes a point on Command line interface implies a non inte
29. lly connects to a switch we located on the head handlebars convenient for operator use 5 Ball handle how s that electrical nostalgia fans A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 13 We also removed an electromechanical module in the carriage used for motor control in other application configurations and installed in its place the power unit for the carriage which would otherwise have just hung around outside the carriage someplace The original design of the PCQ system used a parallel port to connect to the host PC Later a serial port option was added Today the preferred mode of interface is via a USB port on the host operating in a COM port emulation mode The standard configuration is to run a serial cable to the host computer and there insinuate a USB to COM adapter supplied with the system Since we were trying to minimize the umbilical load on the carriage we emplaced the USB to COM adapter directly into the COM port on the carriage controller board and ran a USB cable all the way to the host PC A second USB cable runs from the touchscreen control panel mounted on the sewing head to the host PC The interior of the modified PCQ carriage is seen in figure 5 Figure 5 Adapted PCO carriage with upper carriage removed We see the Y direction drive stepping motor with sprocket and idler pulleys on the left and the X direction drive in the center There is normally a shroud over the sprocket and p
30. lting System Page 32 If desired the user may cause a new pattern description file with those parameters embedded which can then be called up directly for example if the work is done in separate sessions
31. ltural In some such cases the rails can be shifted in their location until they match the preordained wheel spacing of the stock PCO carriage and that is all there is to it More commonly though these default wheels are removed and the PCQ carriage fastened to a mechanical adaptation assembly that carries wheels of appropriate design and spacing running on the tracks of the frame Many major frame manufacturers offer PCQ adaptation kits for their frames NewJoy for example offers such a kit for their Gold Standard frame and is likely developing one for their new Magic frame However it is not yet available Accordingly we designed and had fabricated an appropriate carriage adaptation assembly which we will describe at length shortly Sewing head motor control by the PC Quilter system The PCQ system offers many modes of control of the motor of the sewing head as needed to accommodate a range of heads The system never dynamically controls the head speed It does not for example increase and decrease the head speed during sewing of the pattern Rather the modus operandi depends on moving the carriage at a constant velocity so that with the head running at a constant speed in terms of number of stitches per second the stitch length in the quilting will remain constant Nevertheless in some situations the way in which the PCQ system starts the sewing head motor also requires that it control the speed A Modern A
32. nd the studio is not that easy Now pinning the fabric panel to the edge of the leader is not so simple In any case the three layer sandwich must be pinned to the takeup leader jn situ which turns out to be very tricky done in midair In order to facilitate these operations we have equipped the new system with a pinning shelf system of our design This temporarily holds a narrow board of soft wood the pinning shelf in place as a work surface for performing each of the three pinning operations Two wooden supports which are placed on the forward frame rails near the ends of the machine support the shelf at each of the positions where it is required There are actually four positions that must be accommodated to cater for two different threading schemes that can be used with the machine A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 21 In the illustrations below the system is configured for over the top loading In figure 14 we see one of the shelf supports The surfaces that contact the frame rail have felt pads to avoid marring of the anodized rail surfaces Figure 14 Pinning shelf support In figure 15 we see the left support in place on the front rail of the frame Figure 15 Left support in place A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 22 In figure 16 we see the shelf in place where it would be positioned for pinning the top fabric panel carried by the second spindle
33. ractive mode of control of a program in which any instructions option settings values identification of files to be processed and so forth as given as parameters to the command statement submitted to the DOS prompt that loads and starts the program The PCQ software is not used in that mode The user starts it in Windows with a shortcut and all other input is provided interactively in response to prompts given in a DOS looking serial character oriented dialog This is not a command line interface A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 10 the pattern path in terms of X and Y coordinates expressed in signed decimal notation to a precision of up to 3 decimal places The values are placed in the order X Y with just a space between them For basic operation the origin O O is arbitrary The first point is always executed at the physical location of the carriage when execution begins and all other points are placed relative to the coordinates of that initial point The PCQ pattern language is described in considerable detail in Appendix A SYSTEM PLAN AND ADAPTATION Carriage mechanical adaptation The NewJoy Magic frame uses an unusual track arrangement for the X direction movement of the carriage The long rails of the frame are aluminum extrusions having an open bottom with a central septum see figure 2 On this septum are two tracks both upward facing at different altitudes Figure
34. roat depth of 16 and is equipped with an electric thread cutter an automatic needle threader another feature pooh poohed by old time quilters who never had them on their sewing machines either and a presser foot interlock This machine uses the stitching and drive mechanisms of the Janome 1600P commercial sewing machine mounted in a longer housing designed for the purpose e Automation system This is a PC Quilter Model SF computer controlled quilting system made by Quilting Technologies of Port Townsend Washington This system comprises a two axis servo driven carriage that replaces the normal carriage on the machine quilting frame A controller in the carriage interfaces with a user supplied PC which serves as the processor host running a specialized suite of software We will describe this system in some detail as we go e Host computer This is a Dell Latitude D600 laptop computer 1 6 GHz clock speed with 512 MiB of memory To the best of our knowledge as of this writing October 2008 this is the first mating of the PC Quilter automation system to the NewJoy Magic frame and the NewJoy Crystal Quilter sewing head Adaptation of the PC Quilter automation system The PC Quilter PCQ automation system has evolved over a number of years and the product line includes a number of different arrangements It is intended that the package be adaptable to a wide range of quilting machine frames and associated sewing heads Ther
35. ulley area of the X direction drive to prevent inadvertent entanglement of the belt but this was removed for the photograph The controller PC board is under an aluminum cover just to the left of the transparent green plug which is actually the USB to COM interface adapter For the motor control function we made an interface adapter cable with an embedded relay to run from the motor control jack on the PCQ carriage to an accessory connector DE 9S often miscalled DB 9S on the Crystal Quilter head where the leads from the 6 It uses a servomotor to squeeze the conventional foot controller for the sewing machine head no kidding didn t make that up A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 14 momentary start stop button on the handlebars were accessible The relay a subminiature type was placed in the hood of the mating DE 9P plug so no inline pod was required Head adaptation Little adaptation was required to the Crystal Quilter sewing head An auxiliary bracket was added to support the PCQ touchscreen control panel above the control panel for the head proper The remote pause switch mentioned above was mounted on the handlebar support Figure 6 Crystal Quilter head on adapted PCO carriage Figure 6 shows the head on the adapted carriage Figure 7 shows the carriage cockpit The handlebar assembly and lower control panel are a standard part of the Crystal Quilter head The red push button atop t
36. utomated Machine Quilting System Page 12 Figure 3 Adapter plate with wheel carriers Figure 4 shows the adapter with the PCO carriage in place In the final design the PCQ carriage is about 0 500 higher than shown here to provide increased clearance over the frame rails This picture also does not show the stiffening ribs Figure 4 Adapter plate with PCO carriage Carriage electrics Some minor changes were made in the PCQ carriage wiring arrangements The head motor control circuit was originally terminated in a coaxial power connector like that used for electronic equipment power bricks Such a connector is in our opinion unsuitable for a control circuit so we replaced it with a 2 contact Molex connector small body 0 093 pin series On the standard PCO carriage is a toggle switch used to force the system to pause so that a problem can be dealt with thread tangles etc It was mounted at the rear of the carriage had it been placed at the front it would have been inaccessible through the fabric sandwich But the rear location was inconvenient for operation from the front of the system and in any case that space eventually became needed for a limb of the mechanical adapter plate Thus we brought the pause control leads out to another 2 contact Molex connector it was distinguished from the other Molex connector by choice of housing and contact genders so the two could not be confused This eventua
37. utomated Machine Quilting System Page 8 but only in the sense of putting into effect a fixed speed that is preselected by the user One interface offered by the PCQ system for head motor control start stop only provides a 12 V signal on an interface jack In one mode the signal is on when the motor is to run and off otherwise In another mode a short pulse of the signal is provided when the motor is to start and another short pulse when it is to stop It is this interface in the latter mode that we exploit in our installation Carriage stroke resolution and speed The carriage of the PCQ SF system has an overall Y direction stroke capability of 15 1 The usable stroke is of course constrained by head throat depth considerations The X direction stroke is determined by the width of the frame and the overall carriage dimensions In our system the full X direction stroke is 106 5 The stepping motors use in the PCQ system have 400 full step positions per revolution The drive sprockets have a pitch diameter of 1 4324 a pitch circumference of 4 5000 and thus the full step resolution of the carriage in each direction is 0 01125 The control system allows positioning in terms of half steps giving an ultimate incremental resolution of 0 005625 The carriage travel speed to be used for a particular task is chosen from a set of 7 predefined speeds the specific speed values associated with each step being defin
38. versing different features of the pattern With this feature the instantaneous speed of travel of the carriage is determined through the use of X and Y axis position encoders and the head sewing speed varied proportionately to maintain a consistent stitch length Of course in our system a constant carriage speed is provided by the PCQ control system so this feature is not useful It is a costly add on so we declined it A Modern Automated Machine Quilting System Page 16 The upper unit is the touchscreen control panel for the PCQ system also a costly add on Shown is an alphanumeric entry screen in this case used to select the pattern file to be used One can enter a partial name and touch Enter in which case a screened file list comes up from which the desired file can be selected by touching a very tiny button at the left of the filename hard against the panel bezel opening one had best have long fingernails to do this THE COMPLETE ASSEMBLY Overview Figure 8 shows about the left half of the complete system Figure 8 Completed system Its overall width is 127 wide including allowance for protruding mechanical controls and 43 deep A clearance of 4 is required at the rear to accommodate protrusion of the carriage and head at the limit of practical rearward travel The spindles are 120 long A pattern up to about 100 wide on fabric up to about 104 wide can be worked The actual frame kit can
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