I’m at a knitting conference, and Scott and I decided to use this as a forcing deadline to publish an alpha version of the printable modular flat-bed knitting machine that he has been working on. I made a lil zine about it too.

Knit files and instructions: https://cmu-devlab.github.io/knitting_machine/

This is absolutely an alpha release and we’d welcome feedback. The documentation notably does not include any “how to knit with this,” but fwiw this machine was highly inspired by the Bond “Ultimate Sweater Machine” (as well as other modular knitting machines on Thingiverse), so tutorials for those should be helpful here too.

Knitting Machine | DevLab

An inexpensive modular knitting machine

The machine has, shall we say, zero bells or whistles. It was engineered by Scott (an expert in hobby build processes) to be robust to low-quality printing, to use very few tools, to minimize complication (e.g. all of the bolts are the same), and to be modifiable and open-ended. It is probably harder to use than a “real” machine.

It does have one genuinely helpful unique feature: the cams and needles are *much* more visible than in other machines. I think this will make it good for teaching!

also I’ve been walking around holding this thing like a keytar
@lea this looks really interesting, and I am genuinely intrigued. Any video of it in action? 😇

@oliv Not yet! It’s very much a work in progress (and we were mostly pushing for this deadline of showing people in-person at the conference).

It is definitely not the very smoothest knitting experience and I think a video will help set expectations, so I do want to get some footage soon. I’m hoping that’s within the next few weeks (but, I mean, I hope all kinds of things and they don’t always happen).

@lea thanks, I will follow the project :)