Another trip to Hancock and Moore's Factories May 2021

[drcollie]

My last entry on my trip to H&M last week.

Here's a brand spanking new automated hide cutter machine they just installed 3 weeks prior. It's a remarkable machine as it should be as it cost $ 750,000! In the past, all leathers were marked out by hand and cut using electric shears. There was more waste and it was slower, plus the action of the shear cut would put a slight motion stress on the hide that would make it harder for the sewers to align the panels. This new cutter is very fast, extremely efficient, calculates yields per hide and alignment cuts are perfect. It's only suitable for finished leathers which are very consistent from one end of the hide to the other. Anilines will still be cut by hand as believe it or now they must be visually flow-matched which a computer cannot do. However 70% of all Hancock and Moore leather orders are finished, only 30% are aniline, so this machine will be cutting 2/3's of their total production.

The hide is first put in the drop bin in a roll. Then the operator pulls it up into the scanner and marks the flaws with a light pen, and grades the leather. Prime areas are used for seating surfaces and fronts, tops of arms. Grade 2 areas for backs and sides (will have more imperfections) and Grade 3 for under panels and bottoms of seat cushions edges, plus welt and 6" x 8" dealer samples. Grade 4 is waste. The direction of the light pen determines the grade, up/down/left/right swipes.



Once the hide is fully marked and graded, it moves under the scanners and the computer lays out the entire cutting pattern, in this case this hide will be used on a Ghent High Back Recliner (which takes two hides total). The screen lays out the pattern to make maximum use of the hide, color codes the areas (red areas are waste) and computes usable data for the series.



Onto the cutting! The machine uses lasers and a single Exacto-style blade to fly around the hide amazingly fast. It's all done in a few minutes and the blade has to be changed every two days.



And here's what comes out a the end. All the pieces ready to be stacked and taken to the sewers. Not that the machine puts a hologram on each piece of leather identifying the panel so the person can label them for the hand-sewing. You will also see two dealer swatches cut out of this Juno hide in this photo.



Everyone loves this machine and it was a big ticket item for them and not bought lightly. The sewers love it as it cuts with amazing precision and panel alignments are perfect. The Markers themselves underwent two weeks of intensive training to learn how to operate it, management likes it as it tells them the yield from each hide and that helps control costs. They always knew a percentage of each hide is waste or lower grade, but now they know exactly how much from each leather supplier in a series. That assists them in buying hides and negotiating prices.

If you go to Handcock and Moore for a tour, be sure to ask to see this machine in operation, its pretty cool to watch it work.