You can still use punch cards to operate knitting machines, but a few groups are now bringing the technology full circle by hacking knitting machines so that they may be operated digitally via an Arduino.
The post How Punch Cards and Arduino Close the Gap on Hacked Knitting appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Knitting is a popular needlecraft, but it can get tiring knitting larger pieces. Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet came up with a clever way to automate the process with this open source, open design, 3D printed circular knitting machine called the Circular Knitic. This idea didn’t just come out of thin […]
The post Hypnotic Circular Knitting Machine Weaves Yarn Like Magic appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
Most industrial robots run on proprietary systems, but this experimental KUKA arm uses an Arduino MEGA to 3D print in 6 axes, mimicking the shapes found in nature. Despite the size of this KUKA arm with a custom toolhead attachment — a 3D printer extruder — carefully looking at the […]
Artist duo Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet designed and built an open hardware automated knitting machine called Circular Knitic.
In a lot of ways hand-knitting can be seen as the original form of 3D printing, so it makes perfect sense that artist and designer Gerard Rubio, with some help from Knitic creators Mar Canet and Varvara Guljajeva,
made this incredible open-source knitting machine called OpenKnit. 
Makers create an open-source, low cost , digital fabrication tool that creates bespoke clothing from digital files. 
When presented with a vintage Empisal Knitmaster knitting machine, members of the TOG Dublin Hackerspace worked together to not only bring it back from the dead but to also add some custom hardware that allows for computer generated patterns.
At first the Knitmaster was in fairly bad shape requiring a few custom machined parts just to function. It was originally designed to feed in special punch cards that mechanically directed the many moving parts of the machine (called “dibblers”) to knit patterns in yarn. Using an Arduino, a number of servos, and a microswitch to detect when the knitting carriage is pulled across, this card-read system was replaced with a computer controlled mechanism that can direct the machine to print out images one row at a time.
Of course, you don’t get too many opportunities to name your project something as cute as “The Twitter Knitter”, so once the system was working, it was only a matter of writing some code to snatch tweets from the web and generate images out of the text. Visitors of the Dublin Mini Maker Faire got to watch it in action as they posted tweets with a particular hashtag which the machine happily printed in yarn (as long as they weren’t too long).
Video demo after the jump.
Artist duo Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet collaborated with MTG researcher Sebastian Mealla to produce custom scarves featuring brainwave activity recorded with a non-invasive EEG headset. Brain activity such as relaxation, excitement, and cognitive load were measured while listening to Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” and the data was converted into knitting patterns with Knitic, their open-source knitting machine.
We’re all about big machines that build things for us – laser cutters, CNC mills, and 3D printers are the machines de rigueur for Hackaday. Too often we overlook the softer sides of fabrication that include textiles and knitting. [varvara] and [mar] are doing their best to bring us the softer side of things with their modification of a Brother knitting machine. They call their build Knitic, and it’s a great way to knit with computer control.
Instead of previous Brother knitting machine hacks we’ve seen, Knitic doesn’t bother with emulating the keypad or controlling the microprocessor already there; this build dispenses with the Brother brain and controls the solenoids and switches of the knitting machine directly with the help of an Arduino and a home-etched shield.
It’s not quite an automated knitting machine – someone still has to run the shuttle across the machine – but the patterns are controlled via a Processing app available on the Knitic github. You can check out [Varvara]‘s demo of Kinitic after the break.
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