In the manufacture of articles made of woven textile fabric, a first stage in the production is normally the cutting of the textile that is delivered to the factory on rolled-up bolts up into standard-size sections . The standard-size sections are stacked up and gang cut into the individual pattern pieces, then the individual pieces are separated and sewn together.
The initial longitudinal subdivision of the elongated textile web into rectangular sections must be done perfectly parallel to the weft of the goods. Thus it is standard for the goods to be unrolled on a cutting table and for the worker to notch one of the selvedges and then rip the goods across, forming a perfect weft-wise tear.
Such a procedure must be done by expert skilled operators to avoid ruining valuable goods. It also is a bottleneck in a highly automated operation.
Thus devices have been proposed that facilitate the tearing operation. They typically must be built into a special-duty cutting table that is so very large that it extends at both longitudinal edges past the longitudinal selvedges of the fabric, making it hard for the operator to work at the table, especially when narrow goods need to be ripped.