Patent GB-734406-A (GB)
Title: Pattern means for circular knitting machines and method of operating same
IPC: D04B9/38
Filed: 1951-10-17
Abstract: 734,406. Knitting. SCOTT & WILLIAMS, Inc. Oct. 17, 1951 [Nov. 1, 1950], No. 24195/51. Class 74 (2). In a multifeed machine, each of a plurality of progressive pattern wheels, carried on a rotating cap 64 and serving to project transfer jacks 7, is rotated by the meshing of a gear 13 with teeth 9 on the stationary jack dial 63 and comprises a plurality of superposed discs 16, each bearing peripheral pattern indications, the number of jacks being more or less than an even multiple of the number of indications on any disc by a number exactly divisible into the total number of jacks (thus, in the layout of Fig. 6, each disc bears eighteen frangible projections around its periphery and there are three hundred and sixty-six jack slots in the dial) the pattern indications being divided into units for each of which there is a disc in each wheel and there being butts on the jacks which are selected only by such indications as provide a pattern which is at right angles to the wales, despite the helical disposition of the courses. The needles on each side of a projected jack draw yarn over the jack and knit and the jack may remain out to permit repetition of the operation at the next feed. As the projected jack approaches the following feed, it is projected further by a cam 45, the needle hooks are moved up through the jack eyes, the jacks are retracted by a cam surface 46 and the sinker loops on them are thus cast off on to the needles to produce a one- or two-course eyelet. In Figs. 6 and 10, each square horizontally represents a jack and each square vertically represents a course. In Fig. 6 a pattern is three fields in width, each wheel bears three discs and the jacks 27, 28, 29 bear butts at low or middle and high positions, the low butts cooperating with the lowest or No. 1 discs, the middle butts with the middle or No. 2 discs and the top butts with the top or No. 3 discs. Groups of six consecutive jacks, 27, 28, 29 occur in that order. The circles, crosses and diamonds indicate projections on the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 discs respectively and the eyelet stitches which they produce, the arrangement of the projections around the discs at the 'three feeds being indicated at A, B and C. Those repeats of pattern components which would produce a slanting effect in the pattern are suppressed, a particular pattern unit appearing in the fabric only at every third field. In Fig. 10, a pattern made up of three fields, each containing six jacks, is produced by two pattern feeds, a set of pattern units being completed in three revolutions of the machine. At 53 are indicated the suppressed undesirable reproductions of the pattern unit 52 for the first field and at 54 the first repeat thereof. A cam 48, when operative, projects all jacks, having butts at the appropriate level, to take yarn and cams 49, when operative, withdraw jacks possessing butts 55 before they can take yarn. By the use of these cams, together with removal of jacks not required and the breaking of projections from discs, there may be produced spaced margins, say the unit L only of Fig. 6, or large single margins such as that under the brackets L, M and N, or a design consisting of plain stitches on a background of eyelets: the pattern spacing may be horizontal or vertical or both. Specifications 11481/06, 5993/07 and 5994/07, [all in Class 74], are referred to.