WEFTTRONIC II G for glass processing is also taking off in China,too

KARL MAYER Technische Textilien developed a new weft insertion warp knitting machine, which further expanded the product range in this field. The new model, WEFTTRONIC II G, is specially designed to produce light to medium heavy grid structures.

This stable mesh fabric is used as the carrier of gypsum mesh, geogrid and grinding disc-and the production efficiency on WEFTTRONIC II G is extremely high. Compared with the previous version, the production efficiency of geogrid is now increased by 60%. In addition, cheaper yarns can be processed into high-quality textiles: the production cost of textile glass fiber materials is 30% lower than that of leno fabrics. This machine handles technical yarns very gently. Its performance is also impressive. At the beginning of 2019, Polish manufacturer HALICO ordered the first batch of WEFTTRONIC II G, followed by China in December. Jan Stahr, sales manager of KARL MAYER Technische Textilien, said: “In our recent trip to China before Christmas, we won new customers for the company.” This company is a major participant in this industry. After purchasing each machine, they suggested that they might invest more WEFTTRONIC II G models.

An influential family company
a company privately owned by the Ma family. Mr Ma Xingwang Senior holds shares in two other companies, led by his son and nephew respectively. The companies use around 750 rapier looms in total for their production and thus offer efficiency potential: Depending on product quality, between 13 and 22 rapier looms can be replaced by just one WEFTTRONIC® II G. KARL MAYER Technische Textilien offers intensive service support to ensure a seamless changeover to new technology and to a stateof- the-art machine. The strong partnership led to further recommendations. “During our meetings, the Ma family also introduced us to other potential customers,” says Jan Stahr. The native region of,, is well known for its plaster grid production. Around 5000 rapier looms are in operation here. The companies are all part of an association. Jan Stahr is already in the process of scheduling a pilot system with some of these companies.

State-owned companies with vertically integrated production

As a manufacturer of glass fiber, roving and textiles, the company has gained a reputation in the world. It is one of the top five glass fiber manufacturers in China. The company’s customers in this field include manufacturers in Eastern Europe, who are already operating the machines of KARL MAYER Technische Textilien. After the successful introduction of this technology in the first WEFTTRONIC II G, it is planned to invest more machines. According to the company’s own information, it intends to work in a market with an annual output of 2 billion meters of textile glass fiber materials and gain a huge market share. Therefore, it is planned to invest more machines in the medium term.

Flexibility is tested

In order to better understand the possibility of glass grating structure production, the new WEFTTRONIC II G machine will be tested by customers in June 2020 in China. A wide range of equipment selection and patterning possibilities will be applicable to different manufacturing processes. Different quotations can be tested as part of these processing tests. When working on the machine, customers can feel how the fabric design affects its performance and product yield, and how to use this correlation to improve efficiency. For example, if the square cells of the fabric grid are formed with low warpthread stitch density, the weft yarn has significant freedom of movement in the structure. This kind of fabric is relatively unstable, but its output is high. So as to investigate whether there are any advantages. The performance curves of textiles are verified by corresponding laboratory values. Companies that vertically integrate production especially welcome the opportunity to test machines. Besides textiles, they also produce textile fiberglass materials, so they can test how their own yarns are processed. These tests are supervised by well-trained technicians. The WEFTTRONIC II G is based on a technology unfamiliar to many glass grid manufacturers. In these experiments, they can also find out how user-friendly the new machine is.