BACKGROUND
Shoe manufacture is a labor-intensive business. Shoe uppers must be cut. Joining edges and uppers must be thinned, commonly called "skiving" and "splitting." Upper pieces must be affixed with interlines. Eyelets need to be formed. Uppers must be stitched, sewn, or otherwise affixed to strobels so as to fit over particular lasts, which include specific toe shape, heel height, or other dimension. As shoe technologies continue to evolve, particularly athletic shoe designs, the number of shoe pieces being added has increased, requiring increasingly complicated manufacturing steps to produce shoes. Such manufacturing steps are still largely carried out by hand.
Automating shoe manufacturing is no trivial task. While humans can easily assemble shoes on a last and sew uppers and strobels together, such tasks are cumbersome to machines that cannot move freely. Along the same lines, checking shoe parts for errors can be easily done by workers trained to look for specific problems but is difficult for machines.
SUMMARY
This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.
One aspect of the invention is directed to a machine that automatically prints sewing guidelines on shoe strobels. The machine mechanically moves the strobels to a camera or scanner to capture images. To get the strobels to the camera, the strobels may be picked up by a vacuum pad out of a compartment holding unmarked strobels. The vacuum pad places the unmarked strobels onto a conveyor that brings the strobes to the camera.
Images of the strobels are captured and analyzed by a computing device, and an image-recognition module identifies strobels in the image so the computing device can instruct a printer how to print the guidelines. Guidelines are then printed based on a strobel's orientation in the image. The orientation of the strobel refers to how the strobel is positioned on the conveyor--for example, slightly turned right, left, etc.
Printing may be performed by any number of printers, such as a multi-head inkjet with the multiple printer heads working in tandem. Once guidelines are printed, the conveyor moves the marked strobels away from the printer, and the strobels are transferred to an end compartment containing stacks of marked strobels. A ramp or vacuum pad may be used to remove marked strobels from the conveyor.
The guidelines printed on the strobels may include cross-sectional lines between different points. That way, error-checking can be performed by looking at how the cross-sectional lines are printed. If the lines connect the points, then guidelines are likely accurate. If not, however, the guidelines may have been printed in error.
Marking strobels with guidelines aid later stages of shoe assembly. Eventually, strobels need to be affixed--e.g., through stitching, adhesion, or the like--to shoe uppers to permit lasting and/or other assembly processes to be performed. While methods for strobel-upper affixations are beyond the scope of the present invention, the guidelines discussed herein can benefit such methods in numerous ways.
Click to expand...