Home Built Knitting Machine

Wow, we knew it wouldn’t be too long before we would see a fully automated home built knitting machine show up. We recently posted a hack where people were emulating the keyboard input of a commercial knitting machine, and that was pretty awesome, but we knew we would be seeing some hacked together machines soon. [corex37] hasn’t let us down with this beast. It is mainly composed of old printer parts, a couple servos, and a Picaxe 18-x microcontroller. It seems to do a good job right now, but lets hope he keeps going. It would be cool to see it able to change colors like the other one.

[via Make]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Fr5R–J2I&w=470]

25 thoughts on “Home Built Knitting Machine

  1. I understand these posts may be made by people who don’t speak English as a first language, but I must emphasize just how stupid you make your selves sound by using the word “awesome” incorrectly. It makes you sound like a uncultured California teenager.

  2. @Ford, I think what Elliot Nixon means is that, before its misuse in today’s language, ‘awesome’ meant “to inspire awe,” or: “to inspire fear, reverence, or admiration in that which is grand/extremely powerful,” and if a simple knitting machine can do that to you, then you need to get out A LOT more often.

    Don’t misunderstand me to be supporting him entirely–it’s pretty well understood today that nobody gives flying f*ck about language.

  3. @Elliot,

    I was a California teenager until about 2 years ago, and though I may have been uncultured, I would still not have typed “a uncultured” instead of “an uncultured”. He used “awesome” correctly. Just sayin.

    I would really like to have one of these at home to pump out blankets. I guess you would have to sew some panels together to make it wide enough, but that’s ok.

  4. That is most definately a “highly awesomized” and “more better” hack than buying one off eBay and just faking keypresses.

    Geeks hack words too, using them in clever ways not in the dictionary… For instance, it is common to shout “Cool!” when you see a program or device misbehave in a most spectacular manner, especially it it explodes or critical pieces get hopelessly munged… ;-)

  5. In Geek Culture, it is also all too common to hear co-workers (cow-orkers) shout “Awesome!” when things go all wonky and totally FUBAR. Of course, the “less cultured” (i.e. “The Boss”) is more likely heard shouting “Holy Sh*t!” in such a situation… ;-)

  6. To knit pictures, you could run two threads (such as brown and yellow) and simultaneously knit two layers, swapping threads where appropriate. This would create a positive image on one side and a negative image on the other. Some blankets have positive and negative images like that method would create. I have a blanket with lions on it, and when it was upside down on the grass, I took a photo of it. Later, making a negative image, the lions look correct, but the grass and leaves are purple. Just sayin… ;-)

  7. Hmm… I remember typing “highly awsomized version of it”. I wonder how that became “highly awsomized it” above…

    *** WHERE IS THE EDIT BUTTON FOR POSTED COMMENTS??? Or is this like e-mail, where I notice all the typos AFTER pressing the SEND button, and then I can’t find the UNSEND button?

  8. This hack was awesome, cool, far out, sweet. Fortunately most understand the over use of any word, doesn’t preclude others using it in t it’s traditional manner. Dare I say a hack that doesn’t inspire awe in at least one isn’t a “real hack”.

    1. Really?
      Knitting is a row of live stitches held in place on a stick or a loop of wire. The latch needles on a machine hold the stitches in place. Crochet only has one set of loops open (the number depending on the stitch and at which point in the stitch formation) If the hook is removed from crochet the stitches do not run in vertical ladders as is the case if stitches are dropped from a machine latch hook, or knitting needle.

      I am sure Passap, Pfaff, Superba, White, Phildar, Bernina, Singer, Brother, KnitKing, Silver Reed, Toyota, Elna, Artisan, Taitexma and a host of others would be surprised to learn they sold crochet machines.

  9. i wonder how fast you could get this thing going it’s curent speed alltho interesting to look at is a bit slow considering just how fast the big ones can knit this thing should be wizzing along (good test speed tho)

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