V bed knitting machine is also called a flat knitting machine, V bed knitting machine has two sets of flatbeds, which means the v bed knitting machine has two needle beds, two of the needle cam for each of these beds. One cam jacket for the front bed and another cam jacket for the back bed. And we can create technical front and back loops of the same course with the help of the two sets of needles and these needles move in opposite directions at a certain point of knitting.
V bed knitting machine is the most popular machine because this gives you a lot of flexibility, you can any time close one bed and operate one single bed machine at any time you can create a single jersey as well as a double jersey depending on the design of the fabric.
Limitations of a Manual V bed Knitting Machine
A manual v bed knitting machine’s carrier is moving by hand. So its demerit is limited width up to 1.5 meters or maximum 2 meters and the other big problem is limited cam speed. Because an operator operates a manual v bed knitting machine by his hand so they can’t move very fast because of their biological problem, due to that the speed of these machines is very low. So the production capacity of a manual v bed knitting machine is limited.
And the other limitation is its tension variation ,when making a course moving from left to right or right to left there may be the chance of tension levels because it is done by the hand so naturally you can expect lots of tension variation on the machine because of the jerk which can be created
Limited Design Possibilities
The other fundamental limitation of manual v bed knitting machine is you can’t make Tuck, Flot loops on either of the bed. Whenever you want to make a tuck all the needles which are selected on one bed will make a tuck , when you set the flot all the needles of that particular bed will make floats. So it’s not possible to create a course where you can have tuck,flot as well as a loop in the same course
Limited Feeder Selection
The feeder is carried by the cam jacket . A manual knitting machine have maximum two feeders and you can create two or three color at maximum.
Tension variation
During the fabric creation fabric is pulled from underneath between the two needle beds with the help of dead weight because of that the tension is pulling the fabric in downward directions, so the dead weight is not uniform because there will be tension variation at a different point. It results in nonuniform nature of loops on the fabric surface
How to overcome the limitation of a Manual V bed Knitting Machine
In the last 30, 40 years many advancements has been done in weft knitting technologies .
1. Automation in cam movement
The first advancement in the machine was done in the automation of the cam movement or the carriage movement with the help of an electronic motor
2.Multiple Feeder selection
The carriage can automatically select any feeders depending on the design of the fabrics. The carriage can pick any of the carriages depending on the requirement of the fabric
3. Individual Needle selection
In this technology you can choose whatever stitch you want to create in any particular needle then there will be unlimited design possibilites
4. Racking
Racking is the relative displacement of one bed to another bed
In a conventional V, bed machine needles are placed in the form of rib gating. In this half-pitch racking, we can create a Rib structure
In this zero pitch needles are facing each other. An advanced knitting machine you can shift any of the beds with the respect to the opposite bed and you can create whatever design you want
In this two-pitch notation, bed 2 is shifted by 2 pitch. It means that it has shifted by two-needle points
6. Loop transfer
In this technology, we can transfer loops from one bed to another. By using it we can create Pointelle, Purl knit, cables, and aran knit structure
7.Multiple carriage
The other innovation from the productivity point of view is the multiple carriage machine. If you want to increase the productivity one carriage will make one set of fabric and the other carriage will make another set of fabric
8. Multiple cam system in a carriage
Multiple cam system will increase the productivity and this will give you a lot of flexibility
