Hacker News Reader

Comment by sondr3 | Hacker News Reader

I recently bought an old Brother knitting machine (KH940) which is electronic but with a community of hackers adding third-party firmware and hardware on it [0]. There are also lots of models that read punch cards [1] and knit that purely mechanically (and later models electronically). They are a marvel of engineering that has essentially died out, only Silver Reed and Taitexma produce new models as far as I'm aware and they are often not as featureful as the old machines (SR has no garter carriages that Brother machines had 40 years ago for example).

[0]: http://www.ayab-knitting.com/ [1]: https://alessandrina.com/2015/09/03/brother-kms-punchcards-a...

View on HN

A while back, Lee Valley had a 3D knitted chisel roll available for purchase, which I've always regretted not buying --- any idea on who might have made that or where to get now?

https://www.leevalley.com/en-gb/shop/tools/workshop/storage/...

I somehow doubt Dieter Schmid will have it in week 21 of this year....

Seems to be one here:

https://www.rubank.se/en/veritas-3d-knitted-chisel-roll-fits...

There must be commercial machines being made now though. Basically every knitted item you can buy today had to be machine made.

There are commercial machines, but it's important to understand that in the textile industry there's a big difference between commercial and domestic machines, and it's not necessarily that commercial machines are better.

Besides the enormous price difference, commercial machines are usually less flexible than domestic machines. They're optimized to perform a single task at production volume, rather than to do a variety of tasks. Much like how commercial sewing machines typically perform only a single stitch (as opposed to domestic machines, of which modern examples can perform an arbitrary number under computer control), commercial knitting machines can usually only perform a single type of knit. This does mean that the decline of domestic machines in some parts of the textile industry leads to a loss of capabilities that used to be available.

There are industrial knitting machines, but they’re orders of magnitude more expensive, heavier, and tied to closed software ecosystems. They’re extremely capable, but they’re also far outside the hobbyist realm. The only real evolution on these old hobbyist machines is the Kniterate at $16k and 600lbs.

I’m a knitter who’s been considering doing something like this for some time. Thank you for these links. That second one seems like a great jumping off point for this whole world.

Electronic knitting for the consumer-ish, that’s awesome!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com