Flat Machine Knitting and Fabrics

by H. D. Buck

The Widening Device

To the casual observer, the widening machine would look to be a very complicated piece of mechanism, but as a matter of fact the widening device is surprising in its simplicity.

Fig. 54.
Widening Mechanism, Dubied Automatic Widening Machine.

Fig. 54 shows the principle of the method used. The drawing does not by any means reproduce the parts as made, but only shows the principle employed to secure these results, with all superfluous parts eliminated.

The machine proper is a full automatic machine, practically the same as we have just finished with in the last article, with the exception of the needle plates and the needles that are used, and the addition of the widening mechanism. The needle plates are made almost twice as wide as the regular plates, with a gib running through the middle of the lower part as shown. The needles used for the narrowest part of the fabric, and which are never used in the widening operation, are shown by the letter a in Fig. 56, and have one butt only as indicated at b. The needles used in widening have one butt at the same distance from the hook as the regular needles, as at c, and in addition to this they have a second butt at the lower end of the shank extension which reaches down under the narrow gib to the lower half of the plate, as indicated at d.

The slot in the needle plate, at the lower edge, is cut all the way through the plate up to a point which would about equal the distance between the needles up in working position and the needles down. There are needle springs, shown at n in Fig. 54, below each needle which, when the needles are down, project just below the bottom edge of the plate, and when pushed up to hold the needles in working position would have their lower ends about where the lower butts of the widening needles are when down, as shown. The needle spring is shown in Fig. 56, at e, in its position relative to the needle, the upper portion at e fitting in the needle slot below the needle, while the lower part acts as a clamp on the under side of the plate.

The lever shown at f in Fig. 54, together with the slide g and the stop h, is enclosed in a cast block and they, together with the yarn carrier stop i, move freely lengthwise of the small shaft e. There is attached to this block a cord q, which runs over the small pulley o with a weight attached as at p.

It naturally follows that this weight would pull the block, lever, carrier stop and all, over to the extreme right if there were nothing in the way to stop it. The stop h is for this purpose. It is stationary in the block and extends up to the plate, while the slide g is cut back far enough to clear the lower ends of the springs n which are below the needles.