Hope on the horizon for Sircilla weavers

At times, when the power loom weavers continue to struggle in towns like Sircilla, son of a worker from now closed DBR mills Ravinder Vannam who is a certified energy auditor has come up with a solution for the age-old problem. He developed a cost effective conversion kit for existing ‘shuttle loom’ to ‘Rapier loom’, which not only reduces the power consumption, but also saves time and energy of weavers.

Towns of Sircilla, where there are more than 30,000 shuttle looms had witnessed suicides in recent years. Some of the power looms were also closed down. The innovator, Ravinder Vannam, who had received an award for his invention from the Government of India in 2014, says that upgrading the power to rapier loom can save energy by 20 per cent.

“We got government support, but are now waiting for Central and state government to decide on the subsidy issue to the waivers. If all the 30,000 looms are upgraded in Sircilla, we can save 81,000 mw per year and Rs 177.8 crore approximately. More over it can reduce noise pollution and carbon foot print,” he said.

How it works

Shuttle looms are very slow, power consuming, noisy and laborious to operate. Shuttle is used to carry warp thread from one end to other in the loom. They stop every 2-5 minutes as pirn (bobbin) gets empty. Weaver has to take out the shuttle, change the pirn in shuttle, match the colour, design and restart the loom. This leads to quality problems and loss of energy and output.

New modern Rapiers are available in the market with which higher productivity is possible. They are imported from European countries and China. They are very costly for the small and micro scale operators in India and also consume lot of energy, besides have maintenance problems and as spare parts are not be easily available. “While on the other hand we have designed and developed a conversion kit for existing shuttle to Rapier loom, which means In-Situ upgradation of power loom,” he explained.

One loom in Sircilla was recently upgraded as part of the pilot project. This provided good results and the owner of the loom is happy about the increased production and reduced power consumption. “It is completely zero maintenance and the work has become so simple that a single women in the place three to four people, can handle it easily,” said Ramana, a of weaver of Sircilla. The upgradation which cost less than Rs 1 lakh, is awaiting the government’s nod before other weavers adopt the change. If the subsidy provision becomes a reality, most of the weavers are likely to follow Ramana.

By Md Nizamuddin