Computerized Flat Knitting Machine Controller Hardware Design

Computerized flat knitter is a kind of highly automated flat knit machinery, used mainly in fabrication of clothes and crafts by textile industry. Computerized flat knitter could be used for fabrication of both traditional materials and various other kinds.Based on the analysis of construction and function of the system, the project proposes a design of an embedded control system based on ARM, FPGA and Linux for the flat knitter.The core part of the machine is the control system, which generates instructions following the requests of weaving and the synchronized signals from the machine to make it work automatically. The hardware platform of this scheme includes core application system circuit, implementing circuit of process, and those involving keyboard and display device. Specifically, S3C2410A processor based on ARM9 core of Samsung is applied as CPU. For the problem of more than 200 connections from I/O to main processor, we apply two FPGA chips as the expansion to form the implementing circuit of process. The software platform includes Boot Loader, device driver, man-machine interface and control application.Compared to traditional control systems based on MCU or IPC, this project processes the properties of proper design and highly integrated control ability, high performance/price ratio, estimated as half of the contemporary imports, and first class versatility, meaning ability to read and design various pattern files popular on the market.