Patent GB-811781-A (GB)
Title: Improvements in or relating to a circular knitting machine
IPC: D04B9/26
Filed: 1955-07-22
Abstract: 811,781. Knitting-machines. FIDELITY MACHINE CO. Inc. July 22, 1955 [July 23, 1954], No. 21262/55. Class 74 (2). For use in producing seamless hosiery along the length of which rib and non-rib portions immediately succeed each other, a cylinder and dial machine has, operatively associated with those cylinder needles which are selected to take part in rib knitting, plating fingers which can introduce wrap yarn into both the rib and the non- rib fabrics. Rocking plating fingers 57 alternate with rocking needles 46 on a dial 2 and so are opposite and co-operate with those cylinder needles 3 which co-operate with the dial needles in rib knitting. Thus plating wrap yarn can be introduced, for patterning purposes, into both rib and non-rib sections of the work. The wrap guides bear frangible butts 61 and are rocked, for wrapping, by a cam 67 traversible along the length of the wrap guide shanks, to vary the selection. The wrap yarns are fed from spools 25 carried in a structure 24 rotating with the machine and pass, on their way to the plating finger eyes, through the convolutions of a pair of coiled springs 102, 103 through openings 106 left between the teeth of a gear wheel 26 which rotates a shaft 19 carrying the needle dial 2 and the structure 24, and down guide slots 33 formed by the insertion of blades in other slots formed in a sleeve 32 secured to the shaft. The dial needles are rocked by cams in a cam ring 44; and in one half of the dial the needle butts 52 are of greater height than those 52a in the other half. The needle cylinder 1 is axially adjustable. Yarns for the base fabric, plain or rib, is supplied from spools 116, through tensioning devices 119 and guides 121, to a yarn change mechanism 122 by the use of which circumferential strips may be produced or yarn of one weight substituted for yarn of another weight. Thence, the selected yarn passes upwardly, through guides 123, 124 to a tension finger 335 and then downwardly to the needles, through other guides of which two, with the finger 335, form part of a stop motion system. The finger 335 is movable up and down a rod 339, to vary the length of yarn between yarn changer and needles, in accordance with changes between rib and non-rib knitting or with changes in yarn weight, to ensure that all knots formed in yarn changing shall lie substantially down the centre line of the back of the stocking. The yarn change mechanism comprises a group of ten yarn fingers 145, each guiding one ground yarn. A cam 168 is traversible, to bring it over any one of five consecutive fingers; and the finger assembly is itself traversible to bring either of the sub-groups of five fingers within the range of the cam's traverse. Thus the cam can be brought over any yarn finger and caused to swing it upwardly, to bring its yarn into the path of an oscillatory sweep 186, so that both it and the yarn 127 being fed are carried up to a yarn cutter and knotter, the new yarn being substituted for the old. The various operations of the machine are controlled by chains 222, 223, 224 and a drum 221. Speed regulation is obtained by electronic means under control of a potentiometer actuated by a ring cam at one end of the drum. In the stocking of Fig. 24, the rib top 203 embodies circumferential stripes 205, 206, 207, 208 produced by changes in the ground yarn, and a diamond design 209 produced by use of the plating fingers: the non- rib part 204 contains circumferential ground yarn stripes 212, 213 and, between thin, vertical stripes 211 produced by the plating fingers. In Fig. 25, the rib turn-down top 214 embodies circumferential stripes; and in the non-rib leg the design is produced by sequential use of the ground yarn selecting mechanism and the plating mechanism.