Once again, the German Textile Mechanical Engineering Association’s Walter Reiners Foundation has awarded prizes for young engineers in the categories Dissertations, Diploma or Master Theses, and Creative Student Work. And just like last year, a graduate of the Department of Textile Technologies (Prof. Dr. Holger Cebulla) at Chemnitz University of Technology received an award.

The award went to Harry Lucas Jr., who received the 2020 sponsorship award from the German Engineering Federation (VDMA) in the Master’s Thesis category. The prize is endowed with EUR 3500 and is awarded annually for excellent master's theses.

With his outstanding work, Harry Lucas Jr. has made an important contribution to textile machine engineering and set the course for the efficient and cost-effective production of fashionable scarves in Germany

Harry Lucas Jr. was a student in the Textile Structures and Technologies Master's program at Chemnitz University of Technology. In his master's thesis entitled Development of a knitting head for the production of a plated jacquard knit, which was supervised by Prof. Holger Cebulla, he dealt with the development of a knitting head of a right-left circular knitting machine for the production of scarves.

"With his outstanding work, Mr. Harry Lucas Jr. has made an important contribution to textile machine engineering and set the course for the efficient and cost-effective production of fashionable scarves in Germany," summarizes Prof. Dr. Holger Cebulla.

The work has a direct application reference because many colourful scarves and especially fan scarves are produced on flat knitting machines, although this knitting process is very flexible, it is also considerably more cost-intensive than the so-called circular knitting technology, TU Chemnitz says. In order to be able to produce such scarves cost-effectively even on a small circular knitting machine, this must be equipped for the knitting processing of four colours, the University explains. Lucas Jr. has devoted his thesis to this topic and developed a machine that can even process eight different colours, potentially enabling new and, above all, resource-efficient production techniques, TU Chemnitz concludes.

Technische Universitat Chemnitz Website