Stitches

In a knitting machine what is a punch card system?

what is the punch card system?? how does it work and it is easy to work on a knitting machine?

Public Comments

1. Hi the knitting machine comes with cards with holes punched in them.When the card is fed into the machine the holes tell the machine which needles to make the pattern. It is easy to work. You just press a button on the machine to tell it which pattern to knit.
2. Knitting machines include basically a bed of needles and a carriage. When the yarn is cast on the needles, threaded into the carriage, and fed onto the needles by moving the carriage back and forth, you are doing basic knitting of stockinette fabric. If you want a pattern in your fabric, either from adding a second color or from moving the stitches around, there are three ways to do that: 1. Hand-manipulate the stitches. 2. Manipulate the stitches mechanically with a punch-card system. 3. Manipulate the stitches electronically with a computerized system. A punch card system consists of a CARD READER and a PUNCH CARD. The card will have either 12 columns or 24 columns and as many rows as are needed to hold a pattern. Standard gauge machines use cards with 24 columns and bulky gauge machines use cards with 12 columns. The placement of holes punched in the card will determine the pattern that a card will produce. The card reader is either built into the knitting machine or attached to the top of the machine. When it is turned on, it will "read" the card inserted into it by probing with 12 (on a bulky machine) or 24 (on a standard gauge machine) plastic "fingers." The fingers will "read" the pattern of hole punches and determine the color of yarn used for those stitches or whether the stitches will knit or not on a particular pattern. Punch cards can be used to provide several different kinds of patterns. They include stranded/Fair Isle/color patterns, "tucked" patterns, slip stitch patterns, and punch/thread lace patterns. Sometimes a card is useful for only one type of pattern; sometimes they are useful for multiple types of patterns.