In the garment and apparel industry, metal detecting machines are generally utilized to detect needles and small metal parts that may have been accidentally lodged in finished garments. Shipping garments with needles, sharp or other unwanted metal objects could result in blacklisting or heavy financial losses for the factories and bad publicity, product recall, financial losses and legal actions for brands.
Needle detection is also an integral part of the garment manufacturing companies that produce apparel for babies or kids. Generally, conveyor type metal detection machines are recommended and used.
Calibration of Metal Detection Machine
Conveyor detectors should be calibrated to 1.0-1.2 mm/customer’s standard ferrous object detection.
The 9 Point calibration ensures that the equipment is functioning correctly and operating at the correct sensitivity (1.0, 1.2mm or as per customer’s standard).
• The 9 Point calibration must be done a minimum of 2 times per shift or every time when the machine is out of power/switched off by a certified and trained operator. It is recommended to do it every hour.
• Proper documentation of calibration should be maintained.
Tools Required For Calibration
Metal/ needle detector test card and stand
The procedure of Metal Detection Calibration
1. The 9 Point Calibration check on the detector is done by dividing the metal detector conveyor belt into 3 zones.
2. The Calibration Card, supplied by machine vendor, should be passed through each of these zones at three different height levels.
| Left | Center | Right | |
| Top | A7 | A8 | A9 |
| Center | A4 | A5 | A6 |
| Bottom | A1 | A2 | A3 |
3. The Detector sensitivity must be set at a level which is less than the customer’s requirement (1,1.2mm etc.).
4. The Calibration Card should be placed on the conveyor belt and passed through each zone and A, B and C readings to be recorded on a 9 Point Calibration Report.
Recording Results
The 9 Point Calibration Report should be marked as follows
Y /ok/✓- if the needle detection activates (alarm sounds, the light activates and the machine stop or reverses the card ) when the Ferrous Calibration Card is passed through the search head.
N/Not ok/X – if the needle detector has no reaction (no alarm sound/light/reverse movement of belt) when the Ferrous Calibration Card is passed through the search head.
• If there is no reaction during the 9 point Calibration procedure and report is fail (even a single reading/result fails) the operator must stop the machine and call the supervisor. The product should not be tested with such a machine.
The Process Video
Metal Detection Equipment Suppliers:
Below are the name and website details of some of the popular metal detection machine brands.
Lock Inspection Systems Ltd. www.lockinspection.com
Safeline www.safeline.co.uk
Cintex Group Ltd www.cintex.co.uk
Hashima www.hashima.co.jp
Greeting from Apache Footwear India Pvt. Ltd, we are a Adidas shoes manufacturer with more than 10000+ employees, located in Chennai, AP State, India.
We are having 102 nos. of needle detector machines need to do calibration.
We want to know are you able to do the calibration for shoes needle detector machine?
In this machine, there is a ‘T’ mode and a ‘P’ mode. which option do we have to select during passing the garments through the machine?