Inside the Marker Room

Have you ever wondered how our custom and tailored aprons are created? It takes skill and precision. Attention to detail and laser-sharp focus. Some, like Betsy Laster, our Production Technologies Manager, even call it an art—and our workers, artisans.

“Creating our aprons is like creating a designer garment,” Betsy says. “It’s a fashionable garment for radiation protection. Our marker room adds that custom feel to it. I like to say, ‘it’s where the magic happens.’ It helps us to make pieces that are tailored to each customer’s needs and tastes, makes them stand out, brings their personality to the workplace, and helps them look and feel good.”

Our marker room is the key to creating custom, tailored pieces and adding design elements like embroidery that our customers love.

As we develop the patterns for our aprons, our team lays markers down on the fabric. A marker is like a stencil that outlines how the different pieces of the garment should be cut. Once these markers are in place, the protective fabric goes through our leading-edge Gerber cutting technologies.

Recently, we upgraded our Gerber software to AccuNest. This tool uses powerful rules and algorithms to lay the markers out more efficiently. Before, we were manually laying the pattern pieces out on the belt. Now, we choose which pieces to lay, and the software automatically lays the marker out for us.

It makes a tighter marker, which has many benefits for both our team and our customers:

• There’s less waste in production.
• We can alter the patterns easily to get the best fit for each customer.
• It saves a lot of time, especially as volume increases.
• It doesn’t require as much oversight as applying the markers manually.
• There’s less room for errors, which makes a precise fit.

“In general, what we do gives a better, more comfortable fit for the customer,” Betsy says. “If our aprons are fitting well, the wearer won’t feel the weight because there isn’t extra protective material inside. Some customers wear their aprons for 8-9 hours at a time, so it gets heavy. This technology gives them the best fit and level of comfort and not any excess that weighs more.”

“We’re also able to offer new designs and fabrics because everyone wants their individual apron to be different than others,’” Betsy adds. “Our customers can get certain embroidery and printed fabrics, and they appreciate it when it’s more stylish.”

We’re excited about what the future holds. We’re integrating our 3DLOOK technology directly into a new software package from our pattern design software AccuMark called AccuMark 3D. In the future system, the avatar created from measurements in 3DLOOK will be housed directly in the AccuMark suite.

Measurements for a customer will come into AccuMark with an avatar based on those measurements from the pictures taken in 3DLOOK. Our team will now create a garment from the measurements and then drape the created garment on the 3D avatar to look at tension mapping and determine any areas of fit that may need improvement, all within AccuMark. This will greatly reduce issues of fit that could not be determined prior solely based on measurements.

Like Betsy, our entire team takes pride in making each Burlington Medical garment. Technologies like this make our processes even stronger. When we’re able to use the best technology, we’re going the extra mile to keep our customers safe, protected, and stylish.

Our manufacturing team truly are artisans. Watch them in action!