Planet Arduino

Irene Wolf is the owner a Passap E6000, a computerized knitting machine which features pair of needle beds, and decided it was time to give it an upgrade. In particular, she wanted the ability to control its rear needle bed automatically in a similar manner to the way the front is normally operated for extra functionality.

To accomplish this non-trivial task, she’s using a Raspberry Pi 3 as the new controller, along with two Arduino M0 boards to directly handle the machine’s actions via interrupts.

She’s also driving the device’s motor with a frequency converter and an Uno, as the original control board was broken. Plenty of details are available in Wolf’s write-up and on GitHub, and you can even see it in action (plus a resulting knitted sock) in the video below.

Why head to the store when you could simply create your outfits right at home with the touch of a button? That’s the idea behind London-based startup Kniterate, who has developed what they’re calling “the 3D printer for knitwear.”

The system features Photoshop-like software that enables Makers to easily design patterns using various templates, which are then imported over to the Arduino Mega-driven machine to knit socks, scarves, sweaters, ties, beanies, and other garments. According to the team, they are in the process of developing an online platform that’ll allow you to sketch and share your wardrobe with an entire community.

Kniterate, which was recently introduced at HAX’s demo day, is an evolution of founder Gerard Rubio’s Arduino-controlled OpenKnit project. His vision is to one day democratize textile manufacturing, and will take the next step in that journey when he launches the new age machine on Kickstarter in September. Until then, head over to its website here or watch Tested’s Maker Faire video below!

 

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.

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The post How Punch Cards and Arduino Close the Gap on Hacked Knitting appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

Circular Knitic is an open hardware project created for DOERS, an exhibition curated by Arduino co-founder David Cuartielles, which takes place at Etopia Center for Art & Technology in Zaragoza, Spain.

It consists of an exhibition and a series of presentations, workshops and seminars focusing on the world of open creation, invention and personal fabrication. It aims to unveil a variety of extraordinary creations, ideas that are transforming the world, but mostly show visitors a group of people: “the DOERS, constantly looking for new projects that surprise us”.

During a period of eight months, 5 knitting machines will be knitting slowly and produce enough tubulars so that the ceiling of the art centre will be covered with knitted scarves.

Using digital fabrication and maker tools like 3D printing, laser cutting, makerbeam, and Arduino Uno— Knitic duo designed a replicable circular knitting machine. It’s not the first time they experiment on knitting techniques. A couple of years ago I interviewed them on this blog for their previous project focused on giving a new brain to old knitting machines using Arduino Due.

Various designers are experimenting with 3D printing in fashion but this doesn’t mean  to 3d print garments directly. Knitic approach shows how digital fabrication could have greater impact on the way clothes are prototyped and produced, especially on producing new concepts of machines:

In maker culture, production of textiles is often overlooked. Circular Knitic demonstrates that beautiful textiles can be produced with digital fabrication tools.

Most of Circular Knitic parts are made with  RepRap 3D printers, some others are made of plexiglass that can be easily lasercut in a fablab. Instructions and all the stl files for the components are available for download on the project’s GitHub page.

The videos below shows the building of the machines and when they are in action.

 

Artist duo Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet designed and built an open hardware automated knitting machine called Circular Knitic.

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Makers create an open-source, low cost , digital fabrication tool that creates bespoke clothing from digital files.

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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.

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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.

Read the full article on MAKE

Knitic is a project involving a custom shield for an Arduino Due; these plug into a knitting machine's solenoids and sensors, allowing Arduino control of your machine.

Read the full article on MAKE

Knitic is an open source project which controls electronic knitting machines via Arduino. To be more precise, Knitic is like a new ‘brain’ for the Brother knitting machines allowing people to create any pattern and modify them on the fly. Knitic kit is composed by an Arduino Due, a diy printed circuit board on top of it, connected to the electronic parts of the original machine, (like end-of-line sensors, encoder, and 16 solenoids) and a software to control the needles real-time.

In the past days I interviewed Varvara & Mar, the duo who developed the project. They’ve been working together as artists since 2009 and their artistic practices lay at the intersection between art, technology, and science. When I run into their project I immediately liked their approach as they see knitting machines as the first real domestic fabrication tool, that has been  overlooked in the age of digital fabrication.

Check the tutorial above and then below some answers to the questions I sent them.

 

How come you got interested in knitting?
Everything started in January 2012. We had an idea to knit poetry from spam emails. Hence, we were invited to the 3-month-long residency at MU gallery in Eindhoven and 1-month residency with solo exhibition at STPLN in Malmö,  to develop our project. After seeing MAKE magazine article on hacked knitting machine by Becky Stern, we thought it’s easy and fun to do the hack. Well, we had a bit underestimated the complexity of the project, but finally made more than one knitting machines work and started also Knitic project.

How and why did Arduino become useful to your project?
Arduino is A and B in our work. It means we use Arduino for many purposes, and to be honest, we don’t imagine our lives without it.
We applied Arduino already in our first hack of knitting machines, when floppy emulation script didn’t work for us, since we had 940 and not the 930 machine. Hence, we connected all buttons of knitting machine keypad to Arduino and were able to program knitting machine automatically.
In terms of Knitic, Arduino has a key role, because it gets the outputs of sensors, energize the right solenoids according to the pattern, and communicates with Knitic program written in Processing.

Some weeks ago you were at Maker Faire in Newcastle : which type of people got interested mostly about Knitic? 
Interestingly, the most interested group of people were Dutch educators and the ones connected to creative industries. Also people from local hacklabs were very interested.

In some of your presentations you said that knitting and some other more crafty practices are a bit overlooked by fablabs and makerspaces, why do you think is it like that? Is it a matter of gender balance or there’s something more?
We think it is mainly because of the gender and also because MIT, where the  concept of fablab comes from, is dominated by engineers and architects, who saw more potential in hard-surfaced object fabrication, like 3d printing, laser cutting, CNC, etc. Plus there is not much information about hacking and developing open source knitting or sewing machine online. But we hope that things are slowly changing and soon lots of makerspaces will have knitting machines and other tools for handcraft. Hence, we think Knitic is an important example for re-empowering crafts with novel digital fabrication approaches.

I have a knitting machine at home and I realized you need a lot of patience to make it work, but then it’s fun. Do you think that these hacks could lower the barriers and make it more attractive to less nerdish types?
We don’t think that knitting requires more patience than 3D printing, for example. To be honest, with knitting one is able to achieve first results much faster than with a 3D printing machine. To learn a new skill always requires some time investment.

In your opinion, what type of micro-business connected to these knitting machines could flourish in the next years?
Good question. Definitely, custom made knitwear. At the moment, there are no services which are offering knitwear (sweater, scarf, etc) with your own pattern and letting you chose the yarn type. There could be also  lots of interactive knitting and unique pattern generations. For example, we are working on a project called NeuroKnitting right now.
Soon we’ll make more information available on it. In addition to that, there is another business option that is open hardware in the form of Knitic Kit (pcb and components) or, why not, the whole knitting machine.

Thank you!