Electrical patterning device for multi-station knitting machines having a rotating needle cylinder

Claim 2

In an electrical patterning device for a circular knitting machine having a plurality of knitting stations, a rotatable needle cylinder, knitting needles, electrically operated actuators for directly or indirectly operating the needles, a permanent patterning store containing the patterning information, and read-out means for reading out the store to produce patterning signals, in combination, a buffer store comprising for each of the knitting stations a respective basic patterning store for storing for each rotation of the needle cylinder the patterning signals ''''knit'''' or ''''not knit'''' for the actuators of the corresponding station for each of the wales to be knitted for the respective course; and interrogator means for interrogating the basic patterning stores in dependence on the rotation of the needle cylinder and on the width in wales of the basic pattern to obtain patterning signals therefrom, further including a needle actuators coordinating unit for each of said basic patterning stores; for each said unit movable individual programmed store means moved in time with the needle cylinder, said store means having a binary code encoding the numbers 1 to a in succesion, where a is the number of actuators per knitting station, and wherein the distance between successive information locations in said store means corresponds to one needle step of the needle cylinder, said interrogator means including a replaceable, programmed multi-track, endless tape; as many spaced tape drive rollers as there are knitting stations for moving said tape in time with the needle cylinder so that one complete passage of said tape corresponds to one complete rotation of the needle cylinder; a multi-track read-out head located between each of said drive rollers for reading out said tape, and wherein said programmed store means includes individual drum means rigidly coupled to each of said tape drive rOllers, the cylindrical surface of said drum means having thereon said binary code, and individual read-out means for reading out said code on each said drum means.

Claim 3

In an electrical patterning device as defined in claim 1, further including read-out means; AND gate means having at least two inputs, one of said inputs connected to receive the output of said read-out means, another of said inputs being connected to receive the patterning signal from the corresponding basic patterning store, the output of said AND gate means being connected to control a respective actuator,

Claim 4

In an electrical patterning device as defined in claim 1, wherein said programmed store means comprises a control track having as many information locations as there are used needles of the needle cylinder.

Claim 5

In an electrical patterning device for a circular knitting machine having a plurality of knitting stations, a rotatable needle cylinder, knitting needles, a permanent patterning store containing patterning information, and read-out means for reading out the store to produce patterning signals, in combination, electrically operated actuators for directly or indirectly operating the needles; a buffer store comprising for each of the knitting stations a respective basic patterning store for storing for each rotation of the needle cylinder the patterning signals knit or not knit for the actuators of the corresponding station for each of the wales to be knitted for the respective course; and interrogator means for interrogating the basic patterning stores in dependence on the rotation of the needle cylinder and on the width in wales of the basic pattern to obtain patterning signals therefrom, said interrogator means including a replaceable programmed interrogation store means that moves in time with the needle cylinder, said programmed interrogation store means having a binary code encoding the numbers 1 to y, where y is the number of wale patterning signals stored in a respective basic patterning store, and is the number of wales in the basic pattern, said programmed interrogation store means having at least one read-out head for each of said basic patterning stores, said read-out head reading out one of said binary coded numbers 1 to y per needle step of the needle cylinder; an AND-gate means having at least two inputs, one input being connected to receive the output of said read-out head and the other input being connected to the corresponding basic patterning store containing the patterning signal knit or not knit so that the stored patterning signal appears at the output of said AND-gate means, said programmed interrogation store means comprising a single endless coded tape storing said binary code, and further wherein there is one read-out head for each of said basic patterning stores, said read-out heads being successively spaced along the longitudinal direction of said tape a distance corresponding to the distance between successive knitting stations as expressed in the number of needle steps.

Claim 6

In an electrical patterning device for a circular knitting machine having a plurality of knitting stations, a rotatable needle cylinder, knitting needles, a permanent patterning store containing patterning information, and read-out means for reading out the store to produce patterning signals, in combination, electrically operated actuators for directly or indirectly operating the needles; a buffer store comprising for each of the knitting stations a respective basic patterning store for storing for each rotation of the needle cylinder the patterning signals knit or not knit for the actuators of the corresponding station for each of the wales to be knitted for the respective course; and interrogator means for interrogating the basic patterning stores in dependence on the rotation of the needle cylinder and on the width in wales of the basic pattern to obtain patterning signals therefrom, said interrogator means including a replaceable programmed interrogation store means that moves in time with the needle cylinder, said programmed interrogation store means having a binary code encoding the numbers 1 to y, where y is the number of wale patterning signals stored in a respective basic patterning store, and is the number of wales in the basic pattern, said programmed interrogation store means having at least one read-out head for each of said basic patterning stores, said read-out head reading out one of said binary coded numbers 1 to y per needle step of the needle cylinder; an AND-gate means having at least two inputs, one input being connected to receive the output of said read-out head and the other input being connected to the corresponding basic patterning store containing the patterning signal knit or not knit so that the stored patterning signal appears at the output of said AND-gate means, said programmed interrogation store means comprising a single endless coded tape storing said binary code, and further wherein there is one read-out head for each of said basic patterning stores, said read-out heads being successively spaced along the longitudinal direction of said tape a distance corresponding to the distance between successive knitting stations as expressed in the number of needle steps.

Claim 7

In an electrical patterning device as defined in claim 4, wherein said tape comprises a plurality of binary coded tracks that are simultaneously read out by the read-out heads, each of said tracks comprising as many of said information locations as there are used needles of the needle cylinder and each information location containing a bit that together with the bits of the corresponding information location of the other said tracks define a binary number.