Using the Silver Reed SK840 Knitting Machine

https://wiki.cci.arts.ac.uk/books/facilities/page/using-the-silver-reed-sk840-knitting-machine

by Paul_S • 4 years ago

96 19 4 years ago

wiki.cci.arts.ac.uk

Paul_S• 4 years ago

Most of those knitters still use punch cards, even new ones. Appears there's not much benefit for them to switch to electronic control.

janekm• 4 years ago

Fascinating. It appears they also use punch cards for their catalog photos: https://silverviscount.co.uk/image/cache/catalog/viscount-im...

1122332• 4 years ago

Maybe someone knows and could answer, please: Who is making these machines now?

As much as I can find, none of the following companies are making (home) knitting machines for quite a while anymore: Brother, Toyota, Pfaff, Juki.

No idea what this Silver Reed is.

itronitron• 4 years ago

I think the Silver Reed is a UK brand >> https://silverviscount.co.uk/index.php?route=templates/stock...

ics• 4 years ago

Pretty much just Silver Reed, but their machines seem closest to the Brother and other Japanese models. The brand is UK but at least their knitting machines are built and ship from Japan.

rainburg2• 4 years ago

No one.

The rise of cheap and abundant clothing basically finished the production of domestic knitting machines.

Toyota stopped production around 1990, Brother’s last machine was produced in ~1997, and Pfaff closed their business in 2001.

Just like the Juki, Brother, and Toyota, Silver Reed was a Japanese company (known primarily for their typewriters). They moved their knitting machine business in the early 1990s to China, just around the time the SK840 model was released. No newer Silver Reed models were designed since then. Silver Reed (the Japanese one) itself is defunct since the Fukushima earthquake, I believe.

The only new model of knitting machine that can be slightly considered “domestic” is Kniterate (https://www.kniterate.com/). However, at this size and price (€16k) it’s more of a machine for fashion designers, dressmaking studios, and the like.

Personally, this makes me very sad. There was a time when hand-knitting offered endless possibilities and machine-knitting sorta like a fast, by very limited shortcut.

With the arrival of industrial machines like the Shima Seiki MACH2X not only it is possible to knit the whole garment without seams (as compared to already good circular hand-knitting), it’s possible to have some texture, too. All thanks to four needle beds instead of the traditional two. “Traditional” for industrial machines and some domestic ones like Pfaff Duomatic — most domestic machines typically had only one bed.

Unfortunately, with the death of domestic knitting machines, such technology would never be available for the regular people.

1122332• 4 years ago

Thank you!

It does sound about as bad as I thought. This "death of domestic knitting machines" as you put it has turned it all into some weird steampunk, because these old models are being sold (I can walk into a store and buy a new Silver Reed where I live), so probably someone still makes them, but the technology has been locked in to these models from 80's. Unlike with the sewing machines, where they are still trying to come up with new models, by adding every sort of useless gimmick.

Wouldn't touch Kniterate with a long pole, because of the long term repair and maintenance outlook. They are basically single product startup, and no idea who their OEM is.

scetron• 4 years ago

A lot of these knitting machines at some point upgraded to disks instead of punch cards, or had the ability to add them later. Some of them can use a data cable to a computer to control them.

There's also this really cool kind of hack called All Yarns Are Beautiful which switches out the knitting machine's computer with an Arduino with a custom hat to drive to the mechanism that controls the needles.

https://ayab-knitting.com/

uticus• 4 years ago

Knitting is distinct from weaving: in weaving, fabric is created by interlacing 2 sets of threads at right angles to one another, while knitting involves taking a single thread and looping it around itself, one row at a time.

...now looking a little closer at my t-shirt and slowly realizing what I've been taking for granted.

jonah-archive• 4 years ago

A slightly hyperbolic but technically accurate description of knitting I once received that blew my mind a little was "tie this string into a knot in the shape of a sock".

progre• 4 years ago

I picked up a Bond knitting machine ("the incredible sweater machine") for about 20 planetary credits last year. The pull length can be adjusted, alowing for diffrent yarn thikness but that's the only controll available. Anything you want to do beyond square single color pieces is very tricky, the notion that this machine "makes sweaters" is a joke.

That said, it's surprisingly fun to use. Looking forward to the dark months!

blt• 4 years ago

I love the mix of detailed encyclopedia-like information and institution-specific "ask Agnes" notes. Not sure what makes it so charming. Maybe it's nice to see such a high level of effort put into something without the expectation of a large audience.

MandieD• 4 years ago

Following one of the links on that page, the Knitted Radio (FM transmitter!): http://www.ireneposch.net/the-knitted-radio/

MengerSponge• 4 years ago

A friend of mine did his physics PhD on knitted materials. IIRC, his experimental model was monofiliment knitted sheets, made on a machine just like this one.

A particularly cool paper of his: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12...

pneumatic1• 4 years ago

At my last job I made an app that takes a bitmap as input and returns it converted to a coded pattern that's readable by a knitting machine along with knitting instructions.

The machines I made it for were 25-30 years old and my patterns would end up loaded on floppy disks. I played with some new machines though and tbh was pretty unimpressed with the progress. Nike and Adidas knit like all their shoes so I think the machine manufacturers are just all-in on that.

nielsole• 4 years ago

It is really a shame that knitting machines more or less stopped being produced in the late 90ies.

There is https://www.kniterate.com/ but it is 16k$. You must be really into knitting to pay that price /s

Most machines you find online are decades old or simplistic products that are more or less only useful for scarfs and socks.

I wish the kniterate founders had succeeded in what I understand was their original vision in creating open hardware for hobbyists.

danielodievich• 4 years ago

Oh what a trip down memory lane. My family in 80ies USSR had one of those. Me and my brothers were the manual labor moving the train thing left or right for my mother, it required quite a bit of force and muscle. He'd be on the left, and I on the right, pulling, with my mother putting yarn on. She could do amazing designs for sweaters, both colors and the shapes/patterns of the knit/weave. It made the most specific Whooozzhhhhzhhh sound as it went left and right. Was also kinda scratchy on the needles, if you weren't careful. I never saw those here, which makes sense, commercial machines killed that.

SteveMoody73• 4 years ago

My partner bought an old Brother knitting machine and ribber attachment during the lockdown. I think it was the KH820 if my memory serves me correct, one with a punch card reader.

When she bought it, the machine had been sitting in an attic for a couple of years so by the time she had it it wasn't in the best working condition. Took a little while for me to learn how to strip it apart and clean it, but one done it was back in perfect working condition. It's amazing how well some of these machines were designed. Easy to see why they can still fetch such an expensive price tag.

Using the Silver Reed SK840 Knitting Machine

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