Investigation On Structure And Knitting Technology Of Fully Fashioned Sweater

The fully-fashioned technology is also known as knit and wears technology. It is a technology to achieve seamless products by shaped process on computerized flat knitting machine.It can directly knit a complete sweater without any cutting and stitching. For now, the fully-fashioned technology from advanced foreign companies such as Stoll and Shima Seiki’s is relatively mature, both of them have separately developed special knit and wear machines and plate-making(pattern design) software for the production of whole garment. While fully-fashioned technology of domestic companies is still in the exploratory and imitating stage,they haven’t developed specific computerized flat knitting machine and plate-making software. In this paper, by using domestic plate-making software and computerized flat knitting machine, the knitting process of fully-fashioned sweater was investigated, it is hoped that the results can provide further help for scientific research and actual production practices.This paper mainly includes the following four aspects:1. By utilizing domestic plate-making software L-ONE(its version number is 1.5sp1)from Ruineng Electronics Co., Ltd., fully-fashioned sweater’s pattern was designed, and several common fully-fashioned sweaters were knitted on domestic computerized flat knitting machines manufactured by Jiangsu Jinlong technology company, which have dual systems and three systems with variable gauge(model LXC252 SCV and LXC-370C). The knitting process revealed that the machines and plate-making software can be used to produce fully-fashioned sweater, but its productivity is lower and the pattern designing is very complex.2. Fully-fashioned sweaters were knitted respectively on the computerized flat knitting machine of dual system and three systems by ensuring the same movement speeds, their knittingtimes were recorded in order to compare the productivity. The results showed that by using three-system computerized flat knitting machine to knit fully-fashioned sweater, it not only reduced the knitting line, but also decreased knitting time and improved production efficiency. So it offers a possible direction in improving the producing efficiency of whole garment.3. By using electronic yarn tension-meter, yarn tensions under different conditions were measured during several fully-fashioned fabrics and the influencing factors were explored. The results showed that the bigger the side antenna and knitting speed, the greater the yarn tension.4. In order to investigate whether the fully fashioned fabric structure can be knitted under the condition that the take-up roll is out of work and the knitting only relies on the sinker’s associate take-up, the knitting effect and cooperation movement between needle and sinker were examined when some fabrics and their corresponding fully-fashioned structures were manufactured on computerized flat knitting machine. The results indicated that by reducing the fabric density to a certain extent, some fabrics and simple fully-fashioned structures, such as false Siping, tubular 1x1 rib and tubular plain stitch can be knitted easily, but loop-transfer structure such as tubular 1x1 cable stitch was difficult to knit, which was easy to form a hole in fabric and make fabric unusable.