CHENNAI: In an effort to ease the woes of silk weavers, the State government has started a training module for traditional silk weavers to handle a new range of electronic weaving machines. These are intended to make work less demanding for the weavers.
The government has had the technology for nearly two years and the move to introduce the traditional silk weaver to this format is going on now. A batch of silk weavers in Kancheepuram just completed a 60-day training programme to learn to work on this new machine that looks very similar to their own looms back home.
Some physical differences are quickly noticed — the pen drive slot, the absence of graphic cardboard sheets where designs are embedded, and of course, the overhead Jacquard that determines the intricacies of the weave, all packed in an electronic box. Unlike in the conventional equipment, there is just one pedal instead of two or three.
“This is an initiative that will be useful for all cooperative society weavers as it takes care of the problem of spending too many hours on the machine,” says Balasubramniam, general manager (marketing), Co-optex.
This ‘modernised pneumatic handloom machine’ is designed to reduce the work load for the weaver. A single saree would take only about two-thirds the time to weave now, making it easy for older weavers. Most of a work-day was earlier spent pedalling non-stop on the levers to cast each silk thread in horizontal and vertical patterns.
The mechanism is simple. A software generates a soft copy of a saree design which is fed into the machine which in turn arranges the interspaces, bringing down the loom for that precise pattern. The beauty of the machine is that, besides reducing effort and time that promises to allow weavers some rest and thereby raising productivity, it also marginally removes all possible errors that creep in from pure exhaustion and miscalculation.
“My wife and I trained for two months and gave feedback on how we liked using the new machine. Initially, we were worried about how we will manage an electronic machine as we have been using traditional machines for decades. But this new loom is a lot easier and comfortable to handle,” says weaver Thiruvengadam and his wife, hinting that this could be a blessing.
The handloom technology, besides being actively promoted by Cooptex, has also been commercially adopted by a private silk emporium in the state pushing for newer methods to an age-old tradition.