File:Circ Knit Needle Motion Sketch.jpg

A rough sketch that I made around the end of 2012, of the operation of a plastic Circular Knitting Machine, after painstakingly examining photos and frame-by-frame video footage of an Addi Express machine.

Anticlockwise from top-right (showing two stages, as needles move from left-to-right past the yarn feed): 1. Needle picks up a new line of yarn from the feed, its hooked top pulling the yarn down away from the two fixed pins as it drops. 2. The next needle pushes a previous line of yarn up and onto/around its two fixed pins, as the yarn rolls over a ridge in the needle's profile as it rises. 3. That previous line of yarn is dropped behind this needle (towards the inside of the cylinder and the workpiece) - the yarn switches position on each needle. 4. That previous line of yarn is hooked in front of this needle, below its two fixed pins, as the first needle is about to do. 5. Same as (4). 6. Same as (3). 7. This is like (1), except the new line is now being pulled inside of a previous line hooked around the pins in (2). 8. Same as (1). 9. On rising up on the third pass, this needle encounters a line of yarn already around its two pins/pegs, and the point of its hook picks them up off the pins, dropping them behind it as into position (3).