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Comment by Foffle

10 days ago

An automated, full garment knitting machine that can fit on a desk.

There are only a few knitting machines that can automatically do everything required to knit a complete garment, and they are large, heavy and extremely expensive. I'm aiming to trade off speed against size and cost to create something akin to a 3D printer for knitwear.

I've been testing out various ideas for six months now, and I think I have a workable concept, but there's still a lot of work to do!

7 comments

Foffle

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motohagiography  10 days ago

the impact of this would be significant. You should check out Issey Miyake's "A Piece of Cloth" (Issey Miyake: A-POC and 132 5) collection, which was clothing based on a single piece of fabric. It's old, like 1999 era, but the concept has come up a few times since.

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/100361 is a start, but there are other examples. Rei Kawakubo also did a collection called Square based on a similar concept. Yoji Yamamoto did a couple as well, there were a few moments in Japanese fashion that would work extremely well with a full garment knitter.

These pictures are the top level concepts, but the rest of the collections if you can still find them have more examples.

ivandenysov  10 days ago

I’d love to crowdfund this.

I’ve been on a hunt for a perfect blank t shirt. After trying 10 different models either the fit or the material is not up to my standard.

I wonder how automatable manufacturing of T-Shirts is. Not sure if it is possible to automate sewing on a collar for example. Plus from what I’ve read a tubular t shirt is worse than front and back sewed at the sides cause it tends to stretch and rotate in one direction with time.

Anyway: continuous knitting is more automatable but introduces limitations just like injection moulding does. But the benefit of having a perfect fit might outweigh those limitations.

What’s your take on all of this?

  • Foffle  7 days ago

    Thanks!

    Particularly for finer gauge knits, I believe warp knitting is often used, where many strands are knit at once, crossing back and forth instead of a single strand going round and round (weft knitting) so there shouldn't be any issues with stretching or rotating. There's no reason a T-shirt can't be automated like anything else as far as I know, but I'm not in the industry at all.

    I view it much like 3D printing, it's a tool that is well suited for some materials and tasks, but quite poor for others. Working around its constraints is part of the fun!