Fiber Image Analysis System
Background The quality of any product can be limited or enhanced by the quality of the source material from which it is made, and in the textile industry, this source material is the fiber from which cloth is made. Fiber analysis is currently used in the textile industry to measure fiber attributes that affect the quality of finished materials, such as fiber diameter distribution, fiber blend ratio and other geometric features. Fiber analysis requires the cutting of fiber material into small snippets and subsequent microscopic analysis. Current methods of fiber cutting are time-consuming, tedious and often generate non-uniform distributions of fiber segments on a slide. Uniform distributions of fiber snippets on a slide is crucial for minimizing the crossing and touching of fibers that can lead to errors during analysis. A device that can quickly cut fibers and spread snippets evenly on a slide is greatly needed.Invention Description This device uses pneumatic forces to cut a fiber bundle or web into 0.5mm fiber snippets and to blow the snippets into a chamber, where the snippets deposit onto a slide. It mainly consists of a cutter, a spring-loaded holding plate, a sample retainer cavity, and a fiber collecting chamber. The blades simultaneously cut through fibers at different positions along their axes so that diameter variations within a fiber can be represented within the snippets. The device automates the preparation of a sample slide for fiber measurements with a microscope and allows uniform spreading of fiber snippets.
Benefits
More representative sample More uniform spreading Reduced fiber touching Reduced fiber crossing and entangling
Features
Pneumatic driven Multiple blade cutting
Market Potential/Applications Textile industry for fiber measurement and analysis.
IP Status One U.S. patent application filed
UT Researcher Bugao Xu, Ph.D., Human Ecology, The University of Texas at Austin Yaxiong Huang, Ph.D., Human Ecology, The University of Texas at Austin Wurong Yu, M.S., Human Ecology, The University of Texas at Austin
Type of Offer: Licensing
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