Patent ID: 6026756
Filing Date: 2000-02-22
Classification: D05B

Abstract:
A quilting apparatus comprising:a quilting station having a horizontal needle plate thereat, a plurality of needles arranged in a needle array mounted above the needle plate and a plurality of loopers arranged in a looper array mounted below the needle plate, one needle of the needle array corresponding to a looper of the looper array to form a stitching element pair;a plurality of transversely mounted rollers positioned to guide a web of multiple layered fabric over the needle plate and through the quilting station;a positioning drive connected to the arrays and rollers operable to move the web relative thereto in a horizontal plane;a quilting element drive connected to the arrays and operable to simultaneously drive the stitching element pairs to each form on a web a chain-stitched pattern in accordance with relative movement between the web and the needle and looper arrays by the positioning drive;a motion controller including:a memory containing pattern data entries defining each of a plurality of quilt patterns and product data entries defining each of a plurality of quilt products, each quilt product data entry having associated therewith the pattern data entry of at least one of the quilt patterns, the product data entry of at least one of the quilted products being linked to pattern data entries of at least two quilt patterns of the plurality and including coordination data of the spatial relationship of the at least two quilt patterns as they are to be sewn on a quilted product, anda program module programmed to cause the controller to control the positioning drive and the quilting element drive to quilt an array of chain stitched patterns on the web, one with each stitching element pair, in accordance with the program data entry of a selected one of the quilt patterns and in response to selected product data entry of said at least one quilted product, to quilt an array of combination patterns on the web by sequentially quilting on the web, in the spatial relationship determined by the coordination data, at least two spatially coordinated arrays of different chain stitched patterns defined by the pattern data entries linked to said selected product data entry.