Startup Sewbo has figured out how to get a machine to sew an entire Wem , and it may finally push clothing factories to fully automate.

Jonathan Zornow got his big idea while watching TV. The former Seattle software developer has an unusual bedtime addiction: Binging on the Discovery Channel show how It’s Made."[The show] just tapes machines doing their thing over and over again," he says of the educational manufacturing series. "I find it serene, just watching stamps go up and down and the wheels spin around."

The meditative ritual usually lulled Zornow to sleep, but one episode on blue jeans woke him up. Zornow was stunned to see the complicated steps put into creating a simple pair of pants: The stitching process is still dependent on armies of human laborers."It really bothered me," he recalls. "It seemed strange that we wouldn’t have more automation in that field. I had assumed that robots were making all of our clothes."

Currently, factories rely on humans to guide fabrics through machines and weave them through assembly lines."It seems crazy to me that there was so much labor being spent on these relatively simple goods," Zornow tells fast Company. But once I learned more about it . . . clothing manufacturing is pretty complicated, and getting robots involved has been a huge struggle."

So despite great strides in manufacturing for the automobile and aviation industries in the last few decades, apparel factories remain relatively unchanged. They just moved from the U.S. to the other side of the Pacific where low labor costs helped meet consumer demands for more inexpensive goods. According to a recent study by the United States Fashion Industry Association, 43% of American fashion companies rank rising production or sourcing costs as their greatest or second-greatest business challenge. While Zornow doubts the U.S. will ever be a net apparel exporter again ("That ship has sailed," he says), he's hopeful that at least a portion of manufacturers could return once they recognize automation's strength.
Sewbo is only a year old, but Zornow says he is already fielding dozens of inquiries from overseas factories, where almost all of the clothes on U.S. backs are now made. Domestic apparel manufacturing fell from 50%in 1994 to roughly 3% in 2015, reports the American Apparel & Footwear Association. That means 97% of clothing sold in the U.S. is imported.

How It Works
In the past, companies tried to create complicated mechanical devices to emulate the way a human sews, which "is a very difficult and complicated approach," explains Zornow. Instead, he took a different tack, manipulating the materials to make them compatible with robots. He realized that if he stiffened the fabrics by drenching them in liquid polymers, they could be turned into thermoplastic composites and treated like hard materials. And robots need hard materials.

"They’re stiff as a board, but they can be molded: You can apply heat and reshape them,and when they cool down, they’ll hold their shape," explains Zornow. The machine sews through the stiffened fabric to produce a perfectly finished product. (The process can be used with any sewing machine and most robotic arms, which generally cost about$35,000.) Afterwards, the polymers can be easily washed off with water, no detergent necessary. There are, however, some limitations. Since the material needs to be completely wet, certain fabrics such as wools or leather are out of the question. But overall, even dry-clean-only goods like silks can go through the process. During a demo, it took roughly 30 minutes for the Sewbo process to complete a T-shirt, but Zornow believes it will take less time once it’s put on a manufacturing assembly line.

"I can say with some confidence that when it goes in the production environment, it will be at the same speed as a human sewer," he holds. Unlike a human sewer, however, robots do not need breaks and are rarely subject to error.
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Source : https://www.fastcompany.com/3067149/robot-revolution/is-this-sewing-robot-the-future-of-fashion?_e_pi_=7%2CPAGE_ID10%2C1204114109

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